The Pirates of the Meribian
by DezoPenguin
Summary: Harrr! Weigh anchor and set sail with the notorious Hell Mel on the adventure that will change his life forever, from his role in life to his chance at love.
1. Prologue

_A/N: Long-term members of the Lunar fan community will recall that I first posted this story several years ago at the Shrine to Ghaleon's fanfiction archive. I'm submitting it here strictly for the sake of exposing it to a wider audience whom, I hope, may enjoy this tale of Hell Mell, Dragonmaster Dyne, pirate treasure, and swashbuckling derring-do._

~ X X X ~

The girl studied herself critically in the mirror. She was fourteen years old and about to attend her first adult party, so her appearance was of extreme importance to her. The long silk dress was perfect, its virginal white implying both the innocence of youth and the purity of her status as an apprentice priestess at Althena's Shrine. Her tawny skin was scrubbed clean so that it seemed to have a soft golden glow. The purer gold of her hair had been artfully arranged, curled, and pomaded into a formal style rather than its usual loose fall; the process had taken nearly an hour and had involved a good deal of cursing and complaining, but she had to admit that it looked stunning.

Still, Jessica de Alkirk decided, the effect was not complete.

"There's something missing," she said.

"You look very lovely, Miss Jessica," ventured her maid.

"I don't know. All kinds of people are going to be at Dad's reception tonight, and I don't want to look like a little girl playing dress-up." She flashed the maid a grin, displaying her delicate fangs, which like her pointed ears were a sign of her quarter-beastman heritage. Governor Mel de Alkirk was no ordinary politician serving at the behest of the merchant-lords of Meribia but an ex-pirate, one of the Four Heroes, and a friend of the late Dragonmaster Dyne; things had changed since his rule began and not for the worse (unless, of course, one was a merchant-lord whose nose was held so high it netted stray bugs while walking).

Jessica crossed her arms across her chest and tapped her foot impatiently. What was _wrong?_

Aha! _Color._ She looked like a washed-out ghost. Pale. Insipid! Even her apprentice's white robes had a splash of color at the edges to lend them that hint of dash and élan.

"Jewelry," she decided. "Something to accent everything. Gold, of course; silver would just fade into the white... and with colored stones."

"Best make sure it's something small and tasteful, Miss Jessica, else you really will look like a little girl."

"I know," Jess groused. "It's such hard work being a lady. Everything has to be just so."

She opened her jewelry box and began sorting through the contents. The problem, she soon realized, was that she didn't have anything appropriate for a formal reception. These were her little-girlish baubles, barely more than toys, many of which meant a great deal to her but which probably weren't appropriate for the great lords and ladies of Lunar. Somehow she didn't think earrings shaped like red-and-gold airships were quite the thing. On the other hand, she didn't have anything more formal than a slender gold chain, which was barely like wearing anything.

Jessica wished that her mother was still alive. She had been a lady born, surrounded by this sort of event and the people who attended them from birth. By all accounts, it would have been second nature for her to fix Jess's wardrobe.

"Wait a minute--that's it! Mother!"

"Miss Jessica?"

"Dad's kept her room just like it was, right? So all her jewelry will still be there. I'll just borrow something of Mom's. She's sure to have something perfect."

"Won't Master Mel be angry with you?"

"Absolutely--but he won't do a thing until _after_ the reception. Besides, I don't have any sisters. Who else is entitled to wear Mom's jewelry, anyway?"

Knowing the futility of arguing with Jessica when she got one of her ideas into her head, he maid simply stood aside and let Jess dash out of the room.

As expected, Jessica found the door to her mother's room unlocked; the servants cleaned and dusted it regularly. Master Mel might have kept the room as a shrine to his wife's memory, but it wasn't a tomb. Indeed, the only thing that would have told a stranger that the room was not in regular use was its utter set-piece perfection, the pristine lack of clutter that not even the neatest person could manage.

Jessica's heart was in her throat as she stood on the threshold. That was the problem with keeping the room this way; every time she opened the door it hit her like a tidal wave, happy memories washing over her but merged with bitter sadness because those happy times were gone. _Mom is gone._ And although she had no doubt that her mother's soul was safe in the embrace of angel's wings, Jessica's eyes filled with tears.

_This is silly,_ she told herself through the sniffles. She didn't believe it, though. The only people who would think _that_ were people who needed a swift kick in the hindquarters. She tried again: _Mom wouldn't want you crying over her._ Better. That one had the ring of truth to it, and steadily the tears ebbed and the pang of sorrow receded into the shadows of memory.

Remembering that time was short, she went over to the huge oak vanity table. Her mother's jewelry box was there, delicately ornamented with dark wood inlays against its pale color. Its lock and the sliding catch were a splash of gleaming brass in the front, and Jessica reached out to open it.

Locked.

Apparently Master Mel didn't trust his servants quite _that_ much--enough to believe they wouldn't smash the box or run off with the whole thing, but not to simply leave the lid unlocked for curious hands to open it up and select a few choice pieces.

Or maybe not. It wasn't like Jess's father would ever need the jewels for anything. _He_ certainly wouldn't be wearing them, and even if you left out the Governor's salary for his post they were easily rich enough not to have to sell the jewels for money. The box might simply have been left locked for years.

_So where would Mom have left the keys?_

Since she truthfully didn't have a clue, Jessica began with the vanity drawers. She pulled out one, then a second, finding nothing but clothes. _Silly thought; who'd stash a key in a drawer?_ But she pulled out the third drawer despite her misgivings; when Jess started something she darn well finished. This time, though, she found something stashed behind the layers of clothing, a thin gold chain with a tiny brass key dangling from it.

_Aha! Just where I kept mine when I was a little kid,_ Jessica thought, realizing that hiding the key in the drawer had absolutely nothing to do with thieves, but was pure fun--a little girl's secret game, never mind that the girl in question was a grown woman with a husband and child. The key, of course, fit the lock on the jewelry box perfectly.

Looking for a necklace, Jessica lifted out the top tray, which contained neat little velvet-lined spaces for ear and finger rings. Beneath it, though, she found something besides jewelry.

"What's a book doing in here?" she said, surprised enough to speak aloud. The volume was slim and cloth-bound, with an illuminated picture of a merchantman at sea inset into the center of the cover. It looked like the kind of book in which ladies would keep a diary, or gentlemen a journal (whatever the difference was). Opening it up, she saw her guess was correct; the pages were full of neat, elegant handwriting. Jess was about to set it aside as None Of Her Business when the words on the very first page caught her eye.

_To Jessica:_

After that, of course, there was no chance of her setting it down. The idea of a message left behind by her mother was too powerful to escape, parties be hanged!

_To Jessica: _

_This is a story. It's a true story, one from when your father and I were much younger. You're too young for this story right now, but I'm not sure that... no, let me be honest, the doctors suspect that I shan't live more than a year or two. And I'm sure your father will never tell you this story! _

_I should explain that last part, else you think poorly of him, or of me for saying so. He sees you as his "little lady," you see._ My _daughter, really, not his, which is ridiculous, but there you have it. You'd think a man who'd cry friends with Dyne and Ghaleon and Lemia Ausa would recognize his own worth! _

_But I digress. My point is that he thinks of you as a gently-born lady, but since he himself didn't grow up around ladies he really doesn't understand what being one is about. So he won't tell you for all kinds of reasons. I do hope that you've remembered that you're Mel's daughter as well as mine; the world needs more like him. But then again, I am just a bit biased in that area, I admit! _

_Your loving mother, _

_Amelie de Alkirk_

Despite the wave of emotion that surged over her, Jessica's first reaction was to laugh. That was _such_ an exact description of her father's attitudes! Then again, if anyone would know, it would be the woman who'd married him.

But what was the story? It had lain forgotten for nearly a decade, hidden away among Lady de Alkirk's other treasures, untouched. Or maybe she'd put it there on purpose, figuring that Jess would find it when Mel let her wear an adult woman's jewelry, believing that at that point she'd be "old enough"?

_Oh, who cares? It's the story that's important, not how it got there!_

And with that, heedless of the time, the approaching reception, or her elaborately coiffed hair, Jessica tumbled back onto the bed and began to read.


	2. Chapter I

It began, as so many of these adventure stories do, within a tavern. There is something about the setting, I think, which sets man's blood afire (we women tend to have more sense) for daring adventure, the combination of alcohol to weaken judgment, the presence of pretty serving-maids to impress, and perhaps most of all the camaraderie of one's friends to buoy the spirit. They dare one another to be more brave, more manly than the next and yet at the same time are there to support one another--if with good-natured laughter--in case of failure.

In the cold light of the morning after, things often look a bit different, but by that time one has already set one's course and there is no turning back. Dragonmaster Dyne once told me that the most important place to keep your wits about you is in the tavern, with your friends around you and a tankard in your fist. Mel could have saved himself a lot of trouble, had he thought of that.

I, of course, was in no shape to offer advice on this or any other subject having to do with drinking establishments. This was, in fact, the first time in my life I had even been inside a common tavern. Actually, Pegleg Pete's was not a tavern at all but a low dive and to call it anything else would be an insult to decent bars everywhere. It was dark, dingy, smoky, filthy, and filled with the stench of liquor, unwashed pirates, and assorted bodily fluids.

As I am sure you understand, I was not in such a place of my own free will. I was not the sort of lady who ran off to visit disreputable sites for some kind of twisted amusement in "slumming." I was there because my captors were unwilling to either forego their drunken revelry or to leave me alone aboard their ship to get up to mischief. Personally, I'd much rather have been clapped in irons than forced to endure the stench and the company, but life as a hostage is not filled with choices.

Pirates? Captors? Hostage? I can see the questions already.

One week before, my father's yacht, the sloop _Swiftsure_, had set sail for Saith, with me on board for my annual visit to my maternal grandmother on the occasion of her birthday. On our second day out of port, we sighted another vessel. I'd been taking the air on deck, but the pleasures of my stroll were notably diminished when I saw the captain lift his telescope to his eye and promptly blanch dead white.

"What's wrong, Captain Meros?"

"She's turning," he muttered under his breath, then turned to the helm and shouted, "Hard a-port!" A moment later he was screaming for the crew to, as best I could tell through the nautical gibberish (which I shan't attempt to reproduce here, having little knowledge of seafaring cant), lay on as much sail as the _Swiftsure_'s masts could take.

"Captain Meros?" I tried again.

"You'd better go below, Miss Amelie," he said sternly.

"Not until you give me a straight answer as to why you are working yourself into such a pother, Captain."

My plain speaking produced a reaction quite common to people in authority, particularly gentlemen. Meros scowled at me over his drooping gray mustache.

"Miss Amelie, I am the captain of this ship."

"And under the law of the sea you could have me clapped in irons, keelhauled, hung from the yardarm, or whatever for disobeying your orders. On the other hand, my father is the owner of this vessel, and once you touched land you would find yourself discharged and probably unable to find another billet as a captain anywhere if you tried such a course. So, unless you have designs on turning pirate--"

I'd been going to point out sweetly and reasonably how we both would benefit if he simply told me the truth, but I stopped talking when his right cheek twitched sharply and spastically.

"So!" I pounced on the tic as a clue. "_That's_ it! You think that ship you spotted is a pirate!"

"It turned directly towards us," he explained reluctantly. "There's only two reasons for a ship to do that. Either it needs our help, or it wants something from us. She's no naval vessel, and she's in fine condition and flying no distress signal. Now, will you _please_ go to your cabin, Miss Amelie?"

"Cannot we fight off an attack by a band of ruffians?" I inquired.

"Miss Amelie, a pirate ship of that size will carry with it a hundred or so bloodthirsty cutthroats, armed to the teeth. We have nine hands, two mates, and ourselves. Do you want me to calculate the odds, or has your fancy education extended to basic arithmetic?"

Ordinarily I should have had a sharp retort ready for such an insult, but the captain's point had struck home forcefully.

"Cap'n!" cried the voice of the hand in the crow's nest. "She's hoisted her flag, Cap'n!"

"Can you make it out?" he cried back, directing his own telescope in the direction of the other ship, which was now dead astern.

"It's the Jolly Roger all right, Cap'n. A black flag, with a skull, and--Althena's eyes! An axe and cutlass crossed beneath! It's the _Black Fortune_! That's Hell Mel's ship!"

If the captain had gone white before, he would have been invisible in a snowfield now--and why not? I may not have been privy to the military strategies Father and the other merchant-lords of Meribia used to defend the trade routes, but the notorious Hell Mel was alive in rumor and gossip as well as just dispatches and log books. His exploits were legend; he was the single most infamous buccaneer now at work in the Meribian Sea.

The captain did not bother trying to get me to go to shelter after that point. He and the rest of the crew were too busy praying for deliverance.

Althena, however, did not appear to be listening. With each passing minute, the _Black Fortune_ grew ever closer. The tension of the chase kept me transfixed; in a very real way I was, in essence, too scared to hide. Before long, I could see the black flag with its unique design flapping atop the pirate's mainmast and see the tiny figures of the crew clustered at the ship's rail.

Suddenly, a streak of light burst from the _Black Fortune_'s bow and detonated in a fiery explosion just off the _Swiftsure_'s starboard side; I could feel the heat of it wash over me. This I did not need explained; ships often sailed with magicians on board, especially those anticipating combat. Wind and water magic were the most useful for a wide variety of purposes, while earth was nearly useless, but at sea no element was more immediately devastating than fire.

"Thank Althena it missed!" I said.

"The Goddess had nothing to do with that," the captain replied grimly. "That was a warning shot. Heave to!" he commanded frantically. "Heave to!"

_They're surrendering!_ I realized in terror. They were going to let the pirates overtake us without further resistance. I could hardly blame them; the last thing I wanted was for the crew to throw their lives away, and yet it bothered me. Where was the legendary courage of the mariner, the bravery to fight on and the heroism to succeed against desperate odds? Where was the duty to protect the ship?

To protect _me_.

All right, there it was. I admit it; I was scared. Pirates are wonderfully entertaining and exciting to hear about when you are safe on dry land within a secure manor house, but when their ship is bearing down on yours it is another matter altogether. I wanted to be told I was safe and secure, protected, and I wasn't hearing it.

Truth hurts sometimes, and between the truth I was being told and the truth I was realizing about myself, I had a sick feeling in my stomach as the _Black Fortune_ came alongside us. I could clearly see the pirate crew crowding the bigger ship's decks, swarming at the rail like a wave of rapacious insects ready to pluck our carcass, jeering and catcalling at us in their eagerness for plunder. The ship itself was lean and low, though sizable, built for speed without fancy ornamentation.

Grappling hooks sailed out from the pirate ship and quickly snared the _Swiftsure_; we made no attempt to defend ourselves as the vessels were secured together and the horde of pirates went swarming over the rail to board us.

All in all, the pirates looked much the same as other seamen in their baggy shirts, short jackets, and loose-fitting trousers. Now and again there was one sporting a piece of fancy (likely captured) clothing, gold braid, or a cocked hat, but the real difference between them and the sloop's crew were the weapons. Each was bristling with axes, cutlasses, knives, or even boarding pikes, while many had crossbows slung across their backs.

Leading the first wave was a huge bear of a man, a term fitting not only because of his massive build but the thick, nearly fur-like hair showed by his open-necked, short-sleeved shirt and heavy beard. This and his pointed ears marked him as being of beastman blood; I guessed at least a half if not more.

"This do be our ship now, matey," he bellowed at Captain Meros. "Do ya have any objections ta that?"

Considering the size of the axe the pirate carried--in one hand, nonetheless!--if the captain had any last thoughts about resistance, they went away in a hurry. Not that I would argue. It looked like the pirate could have cut down the mainmast in one stroke! As his men swarmed across the deck, he bellowed out orders to them, keeping the mob of cutthroats in some semblance of order.

"Morgan! Get below and see what cargo there be for the taking! Patch, Edgars, check the supplies and see what they've got that we need. Black Ben, this be a rich man's pleasure boat by the looks of her, so's I'm sure there'll be a fine inventory o' goods in the cabin. See ta it--and be sure none o' it winds up in yer pockets, or I'll keelhaul ya with me own hands! Crocker, Finn, make certain the crew don't takes it into their heads ta become heroes!"

There were a lot of shouted "Aye, Cap'n!"s, and the pirates sprang into action with a surprising amount of organization from an unwashed mob of sea scum. I suppose that if one is to be a _successful_ buccaneer, one learns to take care of the practical business of robbery first of all and save the carousing until later.

It was then I felt the prick of steel at the back of my neck.

"Captain Mel, I think that perhaps I've found the cargo."

Mel swung in my direction, and for the first time his attention focused solely upon me. His face broke into a wide smile.

"Har, Ace, trust ya ta have a keen eye fer the ladies. Fancy dress, no blades, and no magicker's cane, aye, she's a passenger all right. And who be ya, lass?"

"A-Amelie," I said. Oh, all right, I admit it. I _squeaked_. You'd squeak too, with the point of a cutlass at your back and a giant pirate scowling down at you.

"Amelie what?" he growled. "A fancy girl like yerself is going ta have a family name."

It was, I decided, entirely unfair. All the stories said that pirates were depraved, rum-sodden animals, unable to think beyond their immediate gratification. Likewise, the phrase about men Captain Mel's size that I'd heard most often was "big and dumb." Obviously, I'd been listening to all the wrong people.

"I don't!" I squeaked--darn it!--again, fooling no one.

"Please, lass, I prefer jokes when I've got a mug in me hand and a good buzz on."

"Well, all right," I admitted, getting back a little of my confidence, "I do. But I shan't tell you. You'll just do something horrid if I do."

Mel threw back his head and laughed as if this was the best joke he had ever heard, which I guess made him a liar too, so we were even.

"Ahrrr, but I do like a lass with spirit! Nonetheless, ye'll find out I'm not a patient man when it comes ta business." He turned his head and bellowed, "Jack!"

"Aye, Cap'n!"

"I've need o' yer talents, Jack-boy."

The man who answered Mel's summons was the sort of fellow who'd have looked good on the stage in the part of the buffoonish pirate villain, what with his fancy red coat, black boots and breeches, and bicorn hat combined with his long black beard braided up with bits of ribbon. His right hand was gone, and in its place was a gleaming steel hook. Unlike the buffoons, he was lean and saturnine, a cold, cruel whip of a man.

"What do you need, Cap'n Mel?"

"Miss Amelie, here, do be a bit reluctant to share her name. I thought ya might be able ta make the good captain divulge it, so's we know where ta send the ransom note."

"I'd consider it an honor."

He stepped up behind Captain Meros and gently grazed the side of the hook along the captain's cheek, not using the point, just letting him feel the cold metal of it.

"Do you like it? It's usually quite the attention-getter, this hand of mine. Even got me a new name when I acquired it. I used to be Jack Hand, you see, so of course everyone had to call me Jack Hook when I came up a hand short."

Meros went white again, sort of a fishbelly color this time. He seemed to do that rather a lot, which made me wonder how he'd ever managed to win a command in a profession that seemed to value devil-may-care courage.

"Ah, you've heard the name, then, I see. Then perhaps you've also heard how I lost the original model? I was serving in the Meribian navy then, fighting pirates, until a boarding axe took it clean off."

At the last word he sliced out with the hook and one of Meros's epaulets went fluttering to the deck, sliced off by the razor-sharp point of that lethal hook.

"They said I was a cripple, then. Not fit for service at sea. Unable to do my duty. Now, I ask you, do you think I'm unfit to serve?"

He struck down and curled the hook around the hilt of Meros's saber, pulling it from its sheath, then came around to the captain's front side and, saber still held in the hook hand, lashed out and sliced off the other epaulet just as neatly as he'd done the first. With a flick of his wrist, Jack tossed down the saber and rammed the curve of the hook up under Meros's chin, forcing the older man's head back.

"N-no," Meros choked out.

"Well, I found some friends who agreed with you, and wouldn't you know but they were pirates. The very folk I'd risked my life and lost my hand in fighting not only didn't cut off _their_ injured without a pension but accepted them as they were. So now I sail under the black flag, and I've vowed to give every Meribian officer I meet a taste of this hook."

"Think of it," said the dry voice from behind me, "as Jack's little demonstration of the capabilities of the handicapped."

"So ask yourself, sir," Jack continued, "in your position do you want to make me _angry_, or do you instead want to build up a friendly camaraderie?"

"That'd be yer cue, matey," Mel advised.

"De Alkirk! This is the private vessel of House de Alkirk, and Miss Amelie is the daughter of the family's head."

"Right neighborly of you."

Jack Hook cracked Meros on the side of the skull with his steel hand.

"But--but he answered your questions!" I protested.

Jack turned to me as if noticing my existence for the first time.

"A vow is a vow, Miss Amelie," he said with a shrug.

"Then all your promises--"

"I didn't promise anything. Besides, I never vowed to kill anyone, just to 'give them a taste' of this hook. My choice, you see, as to just what that means."

"That's the funny thing about having a reputation fer monstrous cruelty, lass," Mel added with a broad smile. "It cuts down heartily on the amount o' actual fighting and killing a man's got ta do. Why, the whole crew o' this vessel will get ta sail on home and tell yer fancy parents that if they want ya back they'd best be prepared ta pay fer the privilege."


	3. Chapter II

Having acquired a hostage worth (if it does not make me sound immodest) as much as any cargo of silks and spices and infinitely more portable, the pirates of the _Black Fortune_ set sail for safe harbor. Now, when one is a pirate one can rarely just cruise merrily into port, sell goods, and resupply, one reason why they'd ransacked the _Swiftsure_ for sails, lines, and carpenter's tools. However, it is a sad fact of human nature that where there is a dishonest silver to be made, people will find a way. Indeed, Meribia itself has been a home to some of Lunar's most notorious pirates when those pirates sailed as privateers under the authority of one House of merchant-lords or another.

As a true pirate, though, Hell Mel had no such easy time of it. What he did have was Blue Dragon's Key, located in a tangled archipelago south of Caldor Isle. Here there was legitimate business, tropical plantations and the like, but also a safe haven for freebooters. Indeed, many of the Houses and other powerful merchants had representatives on Blue Dragon's Key, where stolen goods could be turned into legally purchased ones under the blind eye of Horam Keys trade law. Indeed, in all of Lunar only Reza is a more noxious den of thievery and brigandage.

The Key's unique position made it a perfect place for the negotiations concerning my ransom to occur. The local law, such as it was, was vastly outgunned by the collected pirates, who would be happy to set aside past grievances for the sake of telling Governor Spotswood to keep out of things that didn't concern him. As for a Meribian military expedition, House de Alkirk's rival merchant-lords wouldn't lift a finger to help, claiming it would be an insult to a sovereign city to send in the fleet to arrest criminals in Horam Keys waters or some such rot. There were the de Alkirk private assets, of course, but I'd have wagered on Master Mel, the _Black Fortune_ and whatever support he could rally in his home waters, especially since my presence as a hostage ruled out measures like decimating the entire ship with fire or water magic.

And just why was I with them, ashore, instead of being under heavy guard? Well, this was the first night back in port, which meant the kind of drunken revelry that did not go well with keeping anyone under any kind of guard. As Mel himself put it, "If I have ta trust anyone ta keep an eye on ya, missy, I'll trust meself first, last, and always." So I was bundled off to Pegleg Pete's with Mel and a contingent of his men.

It was Ace who started it, the man who'd put his cutlass to the back of my neck on the _Swiftsure_. He was a lean, dark-skinned man in his mid-twenties who favored green shirts and had a dry, almost sardonic sense of humor. He'd been unable to resist using that wit when he'd seen his crewmate Morgan flirt tirelessly with the pretty barmaid and, handsome as he was, nonetheless get precisely nowhere.

"Give it up, Morgan," Ace laughed. "You wouldn't be Nita's type even if you came in loaded with the _Cape Matapan_ treasure."

It was at this point that I made the mistake.

"What's the _Cape Matapan_ treasure?"

I know... I shouldn't have asked. I was tired, though, sick of being pushed from place to place, locked into a tiny cabin, fed common sailors' rations (although, to be fair, Mel invited me to dine with him and I'd refused out of stubborn pride), held at blade's point, and generally made well aware of the fact that to them I wasn't a person but an object, a valuable asset. It was terribly dehumanizing, and the truth of it was that just getting someone to respond to my question would feel like a major victory, a breath of fresh air. And, practically speaking, _anything_ I could do to make the pirates see me as a person might help save my life, not that I thought of that at the time.

"Ahr! Ye've never heard o' th' _Cape Matapan_, girlie?" Patch bellowed in surprise. He was a burly, stubble-cheeked fellow whose nickname came from his missing eye. His accent was, if anything, thicker than Mel's. "Cap'n, this has ter be set right at once, afore th' lass goes back inter th' world in such woeful ignorance."

"Well enough. Ya'd like ta hear the yarn, would ya, lassie? I warn ya, it do be a tale o' death and piracy on the high sees, fit ta chill the blood o' a gentlewoman."

There was general laughter at this announcement, but I'd met his eyes as he said it and I got the idea that Mel was being genuinely sincere. I therefore gave him the courtesy of a serious answer.

"Yes, Captain Mel, I'd be most interested."

"Very well, then. Morgan, since yer dreams o' romance are gone fer now, ya can tell the tale."

Morgan groaned, then wet his whistle with a goblet of wine. I had the feeling he'd been born on the wrong side of some rich man's blanket, because he had that whole more-noble-than-thou act down to an art form. He dressed in exquisitely tailored garb suitable for the scion of any House, right down to the broad-brimmed, feathered hat, carried a light, straight-bladed dueling sword rather than the more customary saber or cutlass, and wore his facial hair in a neatly trimmed goatee. Drinking wine instead of ale, beer, or rum was all part of the same dandied-up act.

"Patch is right, Miss Amelie. This is a tale you should know, for it's the story of the largest treasure ever taken by a pirate in these waters, as well as the final legend of the most notorious and bloodthirsty sea-rover ever to hoist the black flag."

"Ahr, that he was," agreed Patch.

"Do you mean... Bloodheart Van Dierken?"

Mel roared in triumph and crashed his fist on the table.

"Har! Didn't I tell ya the lass had spirit?"

I blushed hotly at that.

"I hear stories too, that's all."

"Well, you're quite right. Owen Van Dierken, to give him his proper name. Most stories about him say that he originally hailed from Lyton, but he certainly never sang with anything other than the edge of his sword. He was a brilliant seaman, a near-superhuman fighter, and a master of ship-to-ship tactics. He had to be, because he was also a sadistic barbarian who would put whole crews to bloody torture if they put up the slightest hint of resistance."

"Which differs how, exactly, from your practices?" I asked pertly. I'm not quite sure where my courage was coming from; perhaps I was intoxicated from the fumes--or just hoping that someone would kill me so I would no longer have to endure the stench of the place.

"Now see here!" Mel roared. "We may be pirates, right enough, and I'm not saying there ain't been our share o' killing and looting, but by Althena no one in _my_ crew goes about torturing anybody, not so long as I be cap'n here. This ain't a friendly and jolly business, but there's a world o' difference between being a gentleman o' fortune and a monster!"

"He's funny that way," observed Jack.

Blast it, it was _not_ fair. There was genuine hurt in Captain Mel's eyes. They'd kidnapped me, for Althena's sake. They were _not_ supposed to have feelings, especially not ones _I_ could do any damage to. Nor was I supposed to feel guilty for getting back at them in any way I could. Since when were bloodthirsty pirates supposed to be _people_?

"I'm... sorry," I found myself saying.

"Don't be worrying yerself over it, Miss Amelie. That's the point o' fearsome reputations after all, ta scare the prey blind so's no one's got ta be killing anyone else. Seein's how I makes sure ta spread that reputation far and wide, I oughtn't be afraid o' the consequences."

"The difference, of course, being that while our reputation is essentially the product of skill in battle combined with a good job of rumormongering, Van Dierken's was not," Morgan regained the floor. "He was a killer through and through, and naturally enough his crew consisted of the most vicious rogues and cutthroats to sail the Meribian Sea. For years his atrocities were the talk of every seaport, until at last he committed one too many."

"The _Cape Matapan_?"

"Precisely. She was the prize of House Blaydon out of Meribia, nominally a trader but easily a match for any warship afloat. She was at the head of an expedition sent out by a consortium of merchant-lords, which sailed all the way around the horn of the Marius Zone to fetch up in the Stadius Zone southeast of Meryod. They say one of the four ships was taken by sea monsters on the way, but in any case the expedition was in good enough shape to carry out some..."

"Unauthorized archaeology?" Ace ventured.

"Just so, in the lands of the Prairie Tribe. Now, I've never met anyone from the Prairie myself, but I hear they are quite protective of their territory--and positively implacable towards thieves. The expedition had almost escaped when the Tribe ran them down on those fantastic horses of theirs. There was a ferocious battle on the beach, which only the _Cape Matapan_ managed to survive, but she did so with a hold stuffed with silver, jewels, and valuable relics, including some kind of hideous pagan idol made of solid gold. A million silver's worth at the very least, enough treasure to set any pirate's blood afire."

"If that pirate knew it was there," Jack Hook said. "How did Van Dierken know to hit the _Cape Matapan_, anyway?"

"I suspect he had contacts with their ears close to the ground in Meribia," Ace contributed. "If a rival House got wind of the expedition, it might risk passing word to the pirate community to, in essence, hire a force to ruin their competition's venture without having to pay a single silver piece."

"Ahr, that'd be jest like them greedy coin-stackers," Patch agreed.

While I was not so naive as to believe that inter-House politics did not take place, I was deeply shocked that these men would so cavalierly assume that the merchant-lords of Meribia would scheme at the murder of shiploads of retainers. At the time I simply wrote it off to criminals measuring everyone by their own yardstick, although in truth they were more accurate than I in their understanding. I was about to voice a protest, only to find that I did not have to.

"Patch, curse yer eye, did ya ever stop ta think that yer speaking o' Miss Amelie's friends and family?"

"Sorry, Cap'n." Mel kept glaring at the one-eyed pirate until the man turned to me and added, "Sorry, Miss Amelie." The exchange drew any number of significant glances between the other pirates, whose meaning I could not follow.

"So what happened to the _Cape Matapan_?" I asked, genuinely interested in the story by now.

"No one knew, for the longest time. Then, more than two weeks after she was due to return, her wreck drifted ashore near Lann. It was as if she'd been guided home by spirits, for there was no one living on board--but plenty enough of the dead. After a search, the salvage crew found a log which explained what had happened."

Morgan took another drink of wine at this dramatic moment, then waved his empty cup to get Nita's attention. While he did this, my gaze followed the goblet, and as it did I saw an old, bearded man sitting close by at fireside, paying more attention to us than I thought natural.

"It seemed that just as she reentered the Meribian Sea, the _Cape Matapan_ caught sight of the _Balthasar_, Captain Van Dierken's ship. The sailors wanted to heave to and surrender at once, but the soldiers and adventurers on board had shed blood for that treasure and would be da--er, cursed if they'd give it up at the last. The _Cape_ was damaged from her voyage and the fight with the Prairie Tribe, and this let the _Balthasar_ repeatedly rake her with arrows before grappling and boarding. The defenders were softened up by the initial stages of the battle and exhausted by their ordeal, and at last they fell. The ensuing orgy of torture and debauchery is not a tale fit for anyone's ears, let alone yours, Miss Amelie, but it will suffice to say that only one merchant survived, by hiding in the bilgewater with a breathing tube. The _Cape Matapan_ was too damaged for the pirates to bother with and too recognizable to sell, so they stripped her of every last bit of her stores, in addition to the treasure, of course. The last survivor died of hunger and thirst, therefore, but not before she updated the ship's log to tell the story."

I shuddered in horror. I was young and innocent then, but even now as I write this I cannot help but tremble at the fate of that poor woman, marooned on a man-made island with only the dead for company. There are worse things than blades and spells to fear at sea.

My reaction was hardly unique, Morgan told me. The pitiful story aroused the sympathies of many across the Katerina Zone. The expedition's backers wanted the fortune they'd "earned," of course, and the Prairie Tribe even lodged a formal complaint with Althena's Shrine, requesting that the Goddess herself intervene to force the Meribians to return the stolen cultural artifacts.

"Besides these powerful enemies, Van Dierken also managed to incur the wrath of Blue Dragon's Key and his fellow pirates. The Governor could not afford to be associated with a man who'd crossed so many others, while the other pirates either wanted to get their hands on the plunder or punish the man who'd brought the wrath of all Lunar down on piracy in general."

Nita arrived with a bottle of wine and foaming tankards, which were passed around happily.

"There was a worldwide hunt," Ace elaborated the last point, "and the career of many a pirate was cut short as were those of any number of smugglers and other relatively inoffensive louts."

"What they didn't do was find the _Balthasar_, not at sea, not at port, and not in some secret pirate hideaway out of a book. No trace of ship, captain, or treasure was ever found."

"Do you mean that they retired?" I guessed. "The pirates shared out their plunder and... bought farms, or something of that sort?"

"If they did, then they did a right fine job of hiding. Oh, I'm sure the rank-and-file could have gotten away with doing just that, especially if they took their shares in silver coin instead of goods they'd have to sell, but Van Dierken and his chief crew members? It isn't likely, not with bounties on their heads in the thousands of silver and personal motives to hunt them down besides. Also, don't forget that these men were pirates, experts at seamanship and combat, not stealth and disguise. Ours is a profession of courage, adventure, and flamboyance!"

"Listen to him, Miss Amelie," Ace suggested. "Anyone who wears a feather in his hat and dresses in those colors known about flamboyance."

Morgan flipped Ace's own hat off the dark-skinned pirate's head in retaliation.

"It has become," he continued, otherwise ignoring the interruption, "one of the great mysteries of the sea. What became of Captain Van Dierken and the _Balthasar_? Where is the _Cape Matapan_ treasure now? Even if you steer clear of grave-goods and keep to honest loot there's a fortune out there to be found, and the last chapter to be written in the life history of the most dastardly villain ever to sail the seas of Lunar. It's a mystery that may never be solved."

As Morgan concluded the tale, the old man by the hearth I'd noticed before broke into a wheezing laugh.

"Never be solved, youngling? Why, ye could solve it _yerself_, if ye'd half a mind to."


	4. Chapter III

"'Ere, now," Patch challenged the old man who'd broken into the conversation. "What'cher mean by that?"

"I mean that I know why's th' treasure's never been found!" he said. He spoke softly, so that the people at the next table couldn't easily hear, but there was still a trace of a triumphant cackle in his voice. "What's more, I know where's it do be now!"

"Well, shiver me timbers!" hissed Scrope, another of the pirates at the table. Morgan showed more sense, to my way of looking at it, giving the old man the sharp glance of the skeptic.

"I doubt that very much. If you know, why hasn't anyone heard about it until now?"

"I'd me reasons, ye feather-capped macaroni. For all too long, there'd be all too many lawful owners, or them as claimed ter be, and all with too good a cause ter stretch me neck fer me ter talk ter them. Y'see, I be th' last o' old Bloodheart Van Dierken's crew, and ye told it true about what them's as were in power thought o' us! Arfter a while, I found meself a wife and family, and it didn't seem so important ter go haring off arfter treasure troves. Now, though, I do be all alone in this world, and it do seem a fine thing ter lay old ghosts ter rest afore I furl me sails fer th' last time."

Hell Mel fixed the old man with a steely glare.

"So ya just decided ta tell us the tale and lead us ta the loot out o' the goodness o' yer heart?"

This made the old man once again break into peals of ragged laughter, going so far as to slap his hand against his thigh with a sharp crack.

"Goodness, ye says? I sailed with Van Dierken, Cap'n Mel. There's not a bit o' goodness left in me. I be doin' this fer money--the share that'd be rightfully mine if we'd shared out back then, and forty-five years worth o' interest fer the waitin'."

Jack Hook chuckled.

"Now that makes sense, at least. If the tales are true, Van Dierken always took the dragon's share for himself before splitting out with the crew."

"One-quarter o' th' booty his every time," agreed the old man. "Cap'n Mel be known fer givin' a more equitable split o' th' proceeds, and there's a second reason I've said nothin' all these years. I've grown fond o' this old hide, and I means ter keep it intact. I s'pect ye'd not take th' loot and gully me fer me pains, y'see."

"Trusting sort," Ace murmured.

The point was something of a revelation for me, though, so it stuck in my mind. As the pampered daughter of House de Alkirk, I'd only heard of pirates as criminals, honorless dogs who existed outside all law and order. It hadn't taken long to see that not all of that impression was true the mercy shown to the crew of the _Swiftsure_, for example but that could have just been good business. This, though, was an unsolicited testimonial to Hell Mel's reputation for fair dealing among other pirates a group of men who'd be as suspicious and untrusting a lot as anyone not involved in professional politics could be.

This knowledge cheered me to no end, I had to admit, for it meant that I had a reasonable chance of making it through this escapade alive and well.

Apparently our new friend found it cheering as well, for he favored us with a broad smile. The ingratiating effect, if that's what he intended, was lost on me, thanks to the mouth full of half-rotted teeth separated by broad gaps which he flashed in my direction. Once again I found that just because something looks like a parody of a classic archetype, it doesn't really make one inclined to laugh when meeting it face-to-face. Thankfully, I was out of range of his breath.

"I overheard ye talkin' amongst yerselves, and when I realized who ye be, and better yet what ye be interested in, well, it was like fate put a chance o' a lifetime in me lap. So what does ye say? Be ye game fer it?"

"Game enough to hear ya out," Mel told him. "If nothing else, it'll get ya a round on me and keep us entertained."

The old man snorted.

"D'ye think Tobias Teach be born yesterday? Ye think ter get th' details, then get th' treasure on yer own."

Mel growled under his breath. I got the idea that he didn't much like being taken for a liar and a cheat no surprise, if he was the kind of man to earn the reputation I'd been thinking of a moment ago. In fact, the rest of the pirates were giving Teach angry looks right along with their captain. Ace, Scrope, Morgan, Patch, a couple I didn't know by name; all of them but Jack.

"What can you expect," that latter said with a shrug. "A man like that paints everyone as crooked as he is."

"Well, if that do be the case, Mr. Teach, I give ya me word o' honor that if we choose ta follow up on any leads ya gives us, and if it leads ta anything, then we'll gives ya five full shares o' the treasure. Now, be ya satisfied, or does ya prefer ta leave us be ta do our drinking in peace?"

Teach broke into another smile.

"Yer word on it be good enough fer me, Cap'n Mel. Everyone says yer be most scrup'lous 'bout keepin' it even if it's not in yer best interests ter do so."

"Good. Make room fer Mr. Teach, boys."

Scrope pushed aside to open a space, with the result that as the pirates shifted around the table in a chain reaction, Ace nearly ended up in my lap. A tankard was shoved in front of the codger and he drank gratefully, wiping his lips on the back of his ragged and stained sleeve.

"It were like this, mateys," he began. "Cap'n Van Dierken was a sharp one. He couldn't keep his money on th' _Balthasar_, an' it were sure no legitimate financier would take it, so he cached th' loot so's he could come back ter it later. 'Course, that's th' way it is fer half th' pirates in th' Keys and surely every one in stories, so he had ter be sneaky about it. Sneakier, at least, than th' rogues who'd try ter help themselves ter any ill-gotten gains. He picked out an uninhabited island."

"What's new about that?" protested Scrope, who was a tanned specimen with a red headcloth. "Every pirate story in the world has got to have buried treasure on an uncharted isle."

"That's as may be, and I ain't sayin' yer wrong, but that's what he did. One surrounded by rocks and reefs enough ter rip th' bottom out o' any ships that tried ter make their way in. 'Twas a twisty course ter bring a boat safely ashore, but he knew th' way through th' currents ter his own private fortress. No one'd even think o' lookin' there fer anythin'."

"Clever," Mel judged. "Anyone looking fer a pirate lair would expect a harbor fer putting ashore, and it'd take a fair piece o' stubbornness to fight ta shore without some sound reason fer doing it."

"Well, now we know a very sound reason," Ace joked.

"As fer what happened ter th' _Balthasar_, well, she t'weren't found 'cause she's sleepin' in the Blue Dragon's deep, and not far from th' treasure trove, neither."

"It went down and no one knew about it?"

I admit it, that question was me. Against my better judgment, I was becoming intrigued by the story no, let me be honest, I was positively excited by the prospect of learning the end to the story, especially since it had apparently puzzled people for over twice as long as I'd been alive.

"Y'sees, th' Cap'n had gone ashore in th' longboat ter stow th' treasure, while th' ship stayed off a ways. But while we were waitin' fer him ter finish up, a fire broke out, on account o' Old Tew gettin' drunk and gettin' inter it with th' cook over th' quality o' th' stew near a lit stove. She burned ter th' waterline, and them as didn't perish in th' fire got took by th' current or crushed on th' rocks, 'cept fer me and two others, who made it ter shore. Well, we looks at each other and says, this could be a fine thing arfter all. No one knowed our faces, y'see, and so long as we're not with Van Dierken, then there's no one as wants ter hang us. Moreover, we says, with th' _Balthasar_ on th' bottom o' th' sea, there's not much ter be gained out o' stayin' with him. With that in mind, we decided that we had more use fer his nice, fine boat than he did, and seein' as how he'd gone inland with th' diggin' party he didn't offer a counterin' vote. We got picked up at sea by a passin' ship, and we told them we were survivors o' a wreck, which were Althena's own truth--although I freely admit as how we were not precisely accurate as ter just what wreck."

"You marooned your own captain, and the last survivors of your crew?" I exclaimed in horror, and I wasn't the only one with that reaction. Even pirates, it seemed, had a hierarchy of sins.

"They was all dead men anyway, all but Van Dierken himself, at least!" Teach protested angrily. "Anyone who went ashore with Bloodheart didn't come back, on account of how he liked to keep things private. Th' only exception was First Mate Colvin, the Cap'n's toady. They'd go ashore with prisoners taken from other vessels, to use in th' carryin' and th' diggin', or if there weren't none they'd take th' green'uns as didn't know any better."

I gave myself credit for not actually saying "Dead men tell no tales!" out loud.

"I'd call it justice, then," Mel concluded. "Belated justice fer his crimes."

"I'm just surprised that you didn't hang the bastard from the yardarm long before," Jack said. "Why did you crewmen put up with him?"

I didn't understand the casual way he said it, or the nods of agreement the hook-handed man's statement received from the others. Of course, these were pirates, committing robbery, murder, and kidnapping on the high seas, so what was a little mutiny? But why, I thought, would Mel's pirates expect Van Dierken's crew to mutiny against a man who was apparently the epitome of all the classic horror stories about Meribian Sea piracy?

Even Teach, though, seemed to take it as a reasonable question, for he gave a thoughtful and serious answer.

"There be a few reasons fer that, I think. One's easy; th' man was every bit th' master mariner th' legends say. Knew every coast o' the Meribian like th' back o' his hand, knew th' wind and wave and currents. He brought us prize after prize, and his reputation made sure no one would think o' puttin' up a fight, not against a man who'd made blood and pain his name across all o' Lunar. He made us rich men, made us feared men, me, a lousy piece of dockyard scum, became part o' somethin' big and powerful." His voice trembled faintly, with long-suppressed emotion at what had been and no longer was. "And... he was Van Dierken. Any one o' us raised a hand against him, he'd cut us down without a thought. If it t'weren't one and all, hangin' would be a happy way ter go, by comparison." Teach bobbed his head slowly on his long, spindly neck. "He had us scared but good, that devil, and in th' end he gave us nothin' but death at sea or memories instead o' gold ter warm us at night."

He raised his head, and his gaze swept the table to look at all of us.

"Now, I'm goin' ter go back ter that isle and spit in his grave, and then I'll go off with well more than my fair share fer bein' th' last one left, now that Rummy Bill and Dirk have gone ter their rest if ye'll lend me yer strong backs and strong heads ter th' quest."

I'll give the man this: he knew how to get an audience. Honestly, I'd half forgotten what I was doing there and was ready to hare off in search of the lost Cape Matapan treasure--although, I was soon brought back to ground when a gust in the chimney caused the airflow to shift and a fresh wave of stench to assault my nostrils, it being quite difficult to dream while gagging.

"It could have happened the way he tells it," Morgan offered. "No one found the ship because it was already destroyed by the time the hunters started after in. Van Dierken and Colvin were marooned on the island, and no one would have looked for them in a hard-to-reach place without settlements. All the other officers were dead but not at anyone's hand that would be telling about it."

"All of 'em vanished off the face of Lunar," Scrope agreed.

"Yeah, it could've been that way," Mel weighed in.

"Thank ye much, Cap'n."

"That doesn't mean it actually did happen that way," the half-beastman quickly reversed course. "Each o' us here could think up a story just as good as yers be, and with all the same amount o' proof: none. Even Miss Amelie could, I'll wager."

"No," Ace opined, "she's still sober. You need to be at least one sheet to the wind to make up sea stories."

"Do you truly believe, Mr. Ace, that I would drink anything served in this filthy den?" I asked archly.

"Oh, you'd be surprised what's served here. Some days the drinks will strike you blind, and others you'll sample Tamur stout or the finest Reza brandy. It all varies with the source of supply, you see."

In other words, what the tavern's pirate suppliers could steal.

"So's ya see how it is, Teach," Mel cut through our asides. "Ya may be handing us an easy fortune, or just telling a tale that's more rum than fact. Moreover, we've got other business" --he sent a sharp glance in my direction, as if to remind the others that I wasn't just there to improve the decorations-- "to finish afore we be starting in on the new."

The old man sighed heavily and scratched at his thinning whiskers.

"Well, I can't fault ye fer feelin' that way, Cap'n, and I do thinks ye've treated me gentleman-like, hearin' me out and standin' me ter a drink. Just remember that me offer's open fer now, but not ferever. There do be other fish in th' sea if ye takes me meanin'."

"It do be hard ta misunderstand, and be sure we'll be keeping it in mind until the time comes."

There being little else to say, Teach rose from his seat and hobbled to the door, leaning heavily on a twisted crutch carved from weathered driftwood, a pitiable figure and yet by his own words an unrepentant participant in some of the most vicious acts ever committed at sea in this age.

"D'ye think that was smart, Cap'n?" Patch asked. "Arr, the Cape Matapan treasure's not a prize I'd be keen on missin' if it t'were in our reach."

"Bilgewater, all of it," Scrope decided scornfully. "The old fool's just crazy, or else he's a good storyteller who let his tongue win him a free drink."

"The Cap'n's right," Jack Hook said. "Whether Teach is a liar, a braggart, or telling Althena's holy truth, we've got one affair on our plates already. Two major undertakings at once is juggling too many potential problems."

One of the men who's name I didn't know leaned forward to argue the point, and it proved to be the worst idea of his life. It was also the last decision of his life, because it moved his head directly between Hell Mel and the crossbow bolt that came hurtling out of the corner of the tavern. Even as he hit the table, spilling drinks and plates of food, the rest of the pirates were leaping to their feet, cursing and reaching for weapons, and six masked men seemed to materialize out of the rest of the clientele, tossing aside hooded cloaks as they emerged from different parts of the tavern.

Every one of them had their gazes fixed squarely on our table.


	5. Chapter IV

A tavern brawl in a dockside bar isn't like a fight in more ordinary surroundings, I quickly found, especially when the bar's clientele largely consists of pirates. For one thing, the patrons are armed, and when one person goes for a weapon, everyone else's fingers get itchy for one as well. No one wants to be the person who comes unarmed to a swordfight.

Unfortunately, this time that person was me. As the hostage of Hell Mel's crew, I was not permitted to carry arms, not even a ladylike little jeweled dagger as I'd worn while traveling. They were pirates, after all, not idiots.

I would, however, have given a great deal of money just then for a nice long sword and the skill to use it.

What was all the worse is that unlike ordinary soldiers, sailors are used to fighting in the close confines of a ship's deck. The tavern was much the same, only with walls and a roof. What broke out even before the masked men reached us was not so much a true brawl but a brutal melee between drunken, armed men skilled in the art of killing at close quarters.

The masked men were not dressed like the locals; they wore close-fitting garb of pale gray with cloth tied across their lower faces and over their heads. The ones with crossbows carried small one-handed models useless at long range, and their swords were straight-bladed, though no longer than the sabers and cutlasses of the seamen. They were focused intently on us, leaping over or darting around all obstacles to reach our table. Another one fired at Morgan, but the pirate ducked and the bolt only took his fancy hat off.

"Backs ter backs, mateys!" Mel bellowed, leaping to his feet. He'd left his giant axe on board ship and was instead wielding two smaller hatchets, one in each hand. These, I soon saw, were just as lethal as their larger cousin, as he smashed a masked man's guard aside with one swing and the second split the killer's skull.

"Who _are_ these guys?" Morgan protested, engaging another of the killers.

One of the attackers found that he couldn't get free of his tablemates, so he struck one of his obstacles in the belly and face with a lightning-quick combination of elbow and backfist that sent the pirate flying into someone from the next table over. While the masked man sprang towards us, the pirates at that third table began to fight amongst themselves, angered at the newcomer for flying into them.

Like I said, a drunken melee.

Our part of the fight, though, was one of deadly serious intent. The attackers clearly had murder on their minds, and were just as clearly focused only on Hell Mel and his crew. There were no shouted threats or other macho bravado, just an immediate murderous attack.

The last one with a loaded crossbow put a bolt into Patch's shoulder, then hacked at the burly pirate and cleaved open a nasty wound on his chest. Ace lunged in to interrupt him from going after Mel's back, but this left me defenseless against another of the attackers. For a moment I was utterly paralyzed with fear, and he used the chance to drop his crossbow and grab my forearm. The man's touch galvanized me into action, and I snatched up a tankard from the table and threw it full into the masked man's face.

"Aarrgh!" he cursed, trying to wipe his eyes clear with the back of his sword-arm. "We're here to save you, you stupid girl!"

Oh.

Unfortunately, I'd managed to foil any chance of rescue with my hasty action (which I still maintain was _not_ my fault--how was I to know the assassins were a rescue party?). While the masked man was struggling to clear his eyes, someone shoved a dagger into his back. I saw the point burst from his chest, slick with blood, and was promptly sick.

I think it was sometime around then that someone smashed one of the lamps, spilling flame and oil. Dry wood and spilled alcohol only accelerated the blaze, and soon the fire was licking along two walls. A body went flying by me, alive or dead I couldn't say, and I tried to see if I could make it to the door, but there were too many men and too many blades in the way. Then someone grabbed my dress at the back of my neck.

"Oh, no, Miss de Alkirk. It won't be that easy for you." I turned my head and saw Jack Hook, his namesake dripping with blood. My stomach lurched again.

"We've got to get out of here before the place burns down around our ears!" someone shouted, and Mel took dramatic action to clear a path. He chopped down another assassin who'd been carving up one of the crew, then stuck his axes back into his belt and picked the table clear off the floor! With a roar, he hurled it across the room into the crowd, knocking most of them flat and making a hole to escape by.

"Get going, ye swabs!" his voice boomed out, and we made a run for it, Jack keeping a firm grip on me. Morgan had apparently killed his man, for he was the next out, followed by Ace, a man I didn't know, and Scrope, who was bloody from a nasty cut down the side of his face and another on his arm.

"Althena's tears, where's the Captain?" Ace shouted, seeing that the next several escapees were from among the general public.

"If he's burned to death because of you, bitch..." Jack Hook hissed dangerously.

"I'm going back after him," Ace announced, and had actually taken the first couple of steps when an enormous silhouette appeared at the door and Mel staggered out, gasping and choking from the billowing smoke. He held the body of Patch in his arms, carrying the bloody form of the big crewman without apparent effort.

"Hawes and Dorey are gone," he coughed out as he reached us, "but Patch be still with us, if we can get him ta the _Fortune_ and some healing herbs."

That was why he'd been late escaping. He'd stayed in the building while the fire built up around him to check on his fallen crew members and see if any could be saved.

Now, writing many years hence, I can say that it was then that the seed first took root within me. Not for Mel's acts of courage--bravery _is_ highly valued by warriors and adventurers but in truth is more common than one might think. _Most_ of us, in truth, have some measure of courage when the things we care for are in peril. It was _that_ he cared which mattered to me, that the crew which served under him meant enough to risk his own life to save, with no possible monetary benefit to be gained.

"And the bastards who did it?" Jack swore.

"Dead, gone, and soon ta be burnt ta ash."

"An early taste of what's coming to them," Morgan opined. Under the circumstances I did not feel comfortable in contradicting him, for all that the men had been sent by my parents--or, more likely, by my parents' agent.

I repeated this opinion across the captain's table on board the _Black Fortune_ an hour later. Once Patch had been seen to with a couple of doses of calm herb, Mel had called what amounted to a council of war. Immediate action was necessary, and all the ship's officers were present, not only Mel, Morgan, Jack Hook, and Ace, but also Edgars the quartermaster, Reade the sailing mistress, Black Ben, and Finn. The latter was the ship's magician, a hedge-wizard whom I understood to have trained at the Magic Guild of Vane but dropped out to use his skills for personal profit.

It was Black Ben who was the most fiercely critical of the captain. The boatswain, Ben was a tall, muscled man with tattooed arms and a mop of curly jet-black hair that gave him his nickname.

"You should never 'ave brought 'er on board, Cap'n. Them de Alkirks'll be nothing but trouble for us. I says we just cut our losses an' give the wench back."

I decided that I wasn't fond of Black Ben. Wench, indeed!

"If ye be too much a coward to face a little danger, Yellow Ben, mebbe ye'd best go ashore an' take up accountin'," mocked Reade. The buxom blonde was the only one of the _Fortune_'s dozen or so female crew to hold officer's rank.

_You go, girl!_ I thought.

"The question be, just what kind o' trouble are we looking at?" Mel quickly took charge of the discussion. "Are we going ta be seeing flotillas o' de Alkirk ships and men from here on out?"

"She's their daughter. Would they risk her getting hurt?" Morgan asked sensibly.

"They might, if rescue wasn't the main point of the attack."

"What do ya mean by that, Jack?" Mel asked.

"We attacked their private yacht and snatched their daughter. Maybe the de Alkirks want to make a point to the other Houses and the pirates alike: cross us and you're dead. If they can save Amelie, all the better, but the point would be to see us dead or scattered to the winds, regardless of the cost."

The candle-lantern hanging above the table gave his face an even more lean and dangerous look than he had in full daylight, the effect adding to the ominous weight of his words. I gasped in horror at his insinuations.

"That's not true! Mother and Father wouldn't _do_ that!"

Jack sniffed and gave me an evil smile.

"And what do you know of how they do business, girl?"

"I think she's old enough to understand how House business works, and to know her own parents' minds," Ace offered in my defense. "No offense intended, Jack, but I think you're letting your hate for the Meribians color your judgment."

It was Black Ben who snorted in response.

"I figger 'Awes an' Dorey'd think different about that, Ace."

"The girl didn't expect the attack," Morgan pointed out, and was seconded by Mel.

"Aye, that she didn't, else she'd never have given one o' the rotters a faceful o' Pete's finest."

I flushed, not from embarrassment but from shame at how I'd managed to help spoil my own rescue attempt. It was generally misunderstood by the others, though.

"No need ta be embarrassed, lass," Mel said. "Ya should be proud, standing up fer yerself."

"Darned right," enthused Reade. "Fine lady or not, a girl's gotta show those men they can't take her for granted."

"The point is," Morgan said, "that Miss Amelie is telling the truth. She didn't think a rescue party would be coming, and she didn't recognize those assassins as House de Alkirk retainers."

"Probably they were mercenaries."

"Maybe so, Finn, but she'd have been expecting _someone_ if she knew a rescue party was coming."

"That's assuming she knew what her family was up to," Jack snapped. "I'll agree Amelie was telling the truth so far as she knew it, but what would a pretty, pampered piece of marriage-bait know about the cold, hard side of how the merchant-lords do business?"

"Still, the assassins were there for her. Getting her out was a priority, not killing us," Ace offered his conclusions. "Say what you like, but that was a rescue party: attack by surprise, start a riot, snatch the girl, and get away in the confusion. It would have worked if Miss de Alkirk hadn't resisted, and it might still have worked if most of the best fighters on the ship hadn't been there with her."

"It might be local," Finn offered, stroking his drooping brown mustache thoughtfully.

"What do you mean?"

"House de Alkirk's local agent. Knowing that we'd be celebrating, he might have set up the rescue on his own. If it worked, he'd have been a big hero, both for saving Amelie and for saving the House the ransom money. That's the kind of thing that wins a merchant promotions and bonuses."

"What if the girl got killed in the fray?" Morgan wanted to know.

"Lie like blazes, blame us for it all, and hope that the de Alkirks never learn the truth."

"Jack, I never get tired of your endless faith in the goodness of human nature," Ace observed.

"He and Finn do be right, though," Mel decided. "Ahrr, it could be that way, easy. They're as slippery as eels, the merchants that work here in the Keys. Got ta be when dealing with the sorts o' people that sail these waters. One thing's fer sure; somebody ain't scared ta use more'n just talk ta get Miss de Alkirk back."

"An' now we 'ave to face the consequences of it," Ben snarled. "D'you think they'll stop at just one try?"

"Mebbe yes, mebbe no," said Edgars. The _Black Fortune_'s quartermaster, he didn't say much, and it tended to be on point. "Going ter be hard t'negotiate a ransom if we're dodgin' goons an' sneaks th' whole way."

"We could fort up on the _Fortune_," Morgan suggested. "It's the most defensible place we have."

"Still risking a standoff that way. I'm thinking o' doing something ta keep the moneygrubbers honest."

"What's that, Captain?"

"We take the lass away from here, so's they don't know where ta go looking for her. Meanwhile, we leave the _Fortune_ in port ta strike a deal about the ransom. When that's settled, we bring the lass back. If they don't know where ta look, they ain't going ta be able ta send anyone after her, especially if it do be the local man who's at the bottom o' the shady dealing and not them high and mighty merchant-lords with their tame magicians and such."

The pirates looked at one another, thinking things through. I did too, and I had to admit that it sounded like a good plan to keep me out of the way of any searchers. The problem was that I _wanted_ to be rescued! Or then again, maybe I didn't. What I really wanted was to return home safe and unharmed. People were being killed around me, even _because_ of me! I didn't want any more of that, either, even if it meant letting the pirates get away with their crime. Hell Mel's crew may have robbed and kidnapped, but it was the overzealousness of my own family that had led directly to death, injury, and the destruction of the tavern. It was lucky for Blue Dragon Key that the fire had been stopped before it spread to nearby buildings, or else there might have been a catastrophe!

"So, where do you intend to take her?" Morgan asked.

"I think ya know that already, Morgan. I'm suggesting that we take Mr. Teach up on his offer ta show us where the _Cape Matapan_ treasure lies."

"The _Cape Matapan_?" Black Ben said incredulously. "What, we're to go chasing fish stories besides?"

"Why not?" Ace said. "If even we don't know where we're going, the de Alkirks certainly can't."

"An', if it really be there, we kin give th' girl back if we have ter," Edgars pointed out. "The _Cape_ 'ad more on 'er than a dozen ransoms."

"Presuming that we're actually looking for treasure and not just following a crazy man," Jack said. "Teach isn't exactly the most reliable source, though he spun a plausible tale."

"The point is ta get away while the ransom is collected and they finally agree ta pay it over. If we fetch back a passel o' loot, well, all the better. The way I figure it, we can take the _Fancy_. She's a shallow-draft schooner, perfect fer avoiding rocks and such."

"Stede won't like you commandeering his ship."

"T'were ours ta begin with. I gave it ta him, and I can take it back, regardless o' any black ingratitude that he may be hiding behind."

"Then that's your plan."

"That it do be, Jack Hook, although o' course I'll be putting it ta the crew fer voting."

My curiosity got the better of me again.

"Excuse me," I spoke up, "but what do you mean by, 'put it to the crew for voting'? I thought that you were the captain?"

I do not like being laughed at, and I blushed with mortification, going red all the way to the ears, when the entire table burst into hilarity except for Jack, who merely glanced at me with a combination of pity and disgust that I found almost worse than the laughter. My temper flared up at once.

"Isn't it enough that you've snatched me up like a sack of meal and dragged me here and there like I was some valuable object rather than a human being? Must I be mocked and laughed at for merely asking a simple question? Far be it for me to expect chivalry or courtesy, but at least common decency shouldn't be inevitably out of bounds."

"The girl," noted Ace, "has bite to her."

"Where was your common decency when your paid thugs were trying to gut us like caught fish?"

"They weren't _my_ thugs, Jack Hook, and well you know it! You're merely being offensive."

"Aye," Reade said, nodding sagely. "Bite, fer certain." Which, of course, only gave rise to more laughter.

It was Mel, taking in breath with great gasping whoops, who finally got around to giving me an answer.

"We're sorry, lass, truly, but have ya no idea o' how a pirate vessel be run? Not after all the time ya've been with us?"

"I've been a prisoner, Mel," I shot back, still distinctly cross with him. "My observation has been that I do whatever I'm told by whomever is yelling at me the loudest or shoving me the hardest. It doesn't leave much room for the technical analysis of subtle points of ship's etiquette."

"Well, I admit ya do be a little low on the chain o' command, lass. Even so, a pirate captain rules by favor, not by right."

"I still don't understand."

"Har, on the _Black Fortune_ we be free men and women o' adventure. On a trader, naval vessel, or other ship, the law o' the sea rules. The captain's word be as good as Althena's own by that law. If ya go against him, ya get clapped in irons or lashed before the mast or whatever else he thinks up, and it's all legal. If ya mutiny, it be death fer sure."

I nodded. This point I did understand, for I'd been taught about the powers of the captain before my very first sea voyage.

"Well, as ya might have noticed, we pirates ain't too fond o' the law o' the sea, or any other law, come ta mention it. Many o' us turned pirate ta get away from the hardships o' serving on a legal ship, where low pay and brutal treatment can be the rule. We be free now, and no self-respecting pirate would let some captain say what he or she can do. The crew votes on all matters o' moment, including who gets ta _be_ the captain, and I'll stay captain only fer so long as they wants me ta be."

I didn't really understand. Elections were one thing, but I didn't see how a sea captain could lead when his every decision had to be voted on.

"So what does it mean, then, to be captain?"

"It battle, it's life and death, fer sure. Ya can only have one general in an army, and that general is me. When the _Fortune_ goes into action, what I say goes, just like fer any ordinary captain. As fer the rest, it's strictly me own charm and the crew's trust in me judgment that counts."

"So you lead, but only because your followers trust you to lead? If they want to vote you out, they can, and in the case of important decisions, you put it to a vote of the crew?"

"That's it exactly, lass."

Something clicked into place, and I spun towards the hook-handed officer.

"That's what you meant about hanging Van Dierken, isn't it, Jack? He treated his crew almost as badly as the worst of martinets, and you wanted to know why they tolerated it?"

"Precisely."

"So this democracy isn't just how you run the _Black Fortune_, but how all pirates operate?"

"I'm sure there are a few who don't," Finn said, "but as a general rule the custom is near-universal, at least among the pirates of the Meribian Sea."

"Thank you for explaining," I said. "It seems a very logical way to do things, when the crew is not made up of employees but volunteers."

"I'm so glad you approve."

"Down, Jack," Ace said with a laugh.

"Just observing that Miss de Alkirk is the one person here who _doesn't_ get a vote."

"Why, Jack, that was almost a joke. I do believe you're starting to like me after all," I riposted.

"Now _that'd_ be Althena's own miracle," Reade laughed, and general levity followed, excepting only Jack, myself, and to my very great surprise, Mel. Instead, he merely regarded me with the most curious expression on his face. I wished I knew just what it was he looked to be so thoughtful about, and whether it boded well or ill for me.


	6. Chapter V

_At this point, Jessica, I must digress from my telling of the tale as so to detail certain events which took place out of my direct presence. Of course, I was able to later learn from quite reliable sources what had occurred, but nonetheless I cannot testify with precise accuracy as to details, so I do hope that you will forgive me for any dramatic embellishments._

The man paused at the threshold, taking a moment to compose himself. He was tall and rangy, his face too sharply angled, as if chiseled out of elemental rock, and his nose too prominent for him to be called handsome, but there was strength, vigor, determination, and even empathy in his expression. He was a man of power—that easy confidence never came without it—but he was also a man who used that power with compassion. His armor was a mirror-finish black with scarlet straps and tan plates, his helmet brilliant red edged with white.

His name was Dyne, and he was the Dragonmaster of the Goddess Althena, the human champion who bore with him the magic of Althena's Four Dragons and worked her will throughout Lunar. He was reputed to be fearless by the populace at large, and yet he was forced to steel his heart before he crossed through the archway.

Nonetheless, seeing her, as always, took his breath away. Clad in a long white gown, azure hair spilling over her bare shoulders and down her back, Althena's beauty was incomparable, the perfection of feature quite literally inhuman. It was not this alone, however, which made Dyne's heart melt, for there were many people, places, and things of great beauty in the world. It was the woman inside whose hopes and sorrows he had come to know through years of service that so moved him.

"My lady, you summoned me?"

She smiled sadly at him, a smile weighed down by too many cares and worries, too many responsibilities that should not have had to be borne by one person, Goddess or not.

"Yes, Dyne. I understand that we had several most distinguished"–was there a sarcastic lilt in her voice?—"representatives of Meribia's merchant nobility visit the Shrine today?"

"Yes, my lady, they—"

"Dyne," she said in gentle reproof, "please spare me the formality. It is so trying to have to accept it on public occasions, without having to take it from those who are closest to me."

"My apologies; it is not easy to treat the Goddess as one would a simple friend."

"Yes, I know." For a moment, her sapphire eyes became distracted, focused upon something beyond the room. Dyne wondered if she was gazing into unknown horizons with senses beyond the norm, or merely caught in some private thought. "But then," she finally said, "I have interrupted you. Do forgive me and go on."

"Thank you. The _noble_"—there was no question about Dyne's voice; _he_ was definitely being sarcastic—"representatives of House de Alkirk came to request our aid in dealing with a private matter. It seems that the daughter of the House, one Amelie, was kidnapped by pirates, and they are seeking your assistance in rescuing her. Apparently they are not strong believers in free will."

"Dyne, you are not being kind. Think of the poor girl."

He sighed.

"You're right, my la—Althena. I'd allowed my distaste for the Meribians to get the better of me. Especially the leader, the girl's uncle. The other envoys aren't family, so I could excuse it on their part, but he at least ought to care for her."

"He _is_ here," noted the Goddess.

"Not to help her. He's here to save the family the ransom money which they'd have to pay or else lose face in the marketplace. For all he cares about Amelie, the pirates could keep her."

"I am surprised he shows it so openly. He must know that it will not serve him here."

"If you work every day in a sewer, you eventually can't smell the stench. His stench is his own greed, and he's worn it so long he can't tell he gives it off."

Althena shook her head sadly.

"I feel sorry for him, as well as his niece."

Dyne considered for a moment the likelihood that the kidnapped girl was cut from the same cloth, then dismissed it. Cynical remarks were more the province of his best friend, the master magician Ghaleon, who often accompanied the Dragonmaster on his quests.

"So do I, but no more sorry than I do for the hundreds in Meribia's lower classes who suffer from poverty because of de Alkirk's greed, his and that of those like him."

Althena sighed heavily, running her hand along the intricately carved side of a pillar.

"My poor children. So often, they make the same mistakes." She shook her head in—pity? Frustration? Regret? Dyne could not tell. "And then, of course, they come to me, to us, to save them from the consequences of their own actions."

"Which is why you don't have your priests, not to mention me, running off to the four corners of the world to deal with every goblin and bandit that gets out of hand. That's why there are adventurers, town guards, and local governments."

"Exactly," she agreed with a nod.

"Would it offend you if I confessed that I enjoyed it when the High Priest told that to de Alkirk?"

Althena smiled gently at that.

"Of course not, Dyne, although it really isn't fair."

"I'm only human, Althena. I get to have bad habits."

"Oh, no, I didn't mean that, although you shouldn't take pleasure in another's misfortune, no matter how obnoxious he might be."

Since that was exactly what Dyne had thought she'd meant, he regarded the Goddess quizzically.

"If not that, then why is it not fair?"

"Have the envoys left yet?"

"No; it was too late for them to travel on, so they were given room in the priests' dormitory for the night. I think they plan to leave for Vane in the morning. De Alkirk might be able to get an overly mercenary or romantic magician to help him, though I doubt the Magic Guild will take an official hand in matters. Although, come to think of it, you'd think a Meribian merchant-lord would have a hedge-wizard or three on staff already. Well, the Magic Guild does train the best... Why did you want to know if they'd gone?"

"It makes things easier this way, Dyne. I want you to tell de Alkirk that you will help him."

"_What?_" Dyne yelped. He nearly began his sentence with a curse of "Althena's eyes!" but realized how ridiculous that would be in present company. "Why, of all people, would you bend the rules to help _him_?"

"I...can feel something," she said. Althena turned to the window and gazed out at the night sky, where the Blue Star hung against the sable background. "I can sense it on the wind, in the currents of magic. Something is rising, something fell and dark. There is a connection here, I am sure of it, Dyne. I may not be omniscient, but I know that certain threads will come together. If you find the girl soon enough, you will be led straight to the darkness."

Dyne bowed his head. As the Dragonmaster, it was his duty to wield the magic of Althena and the Four Dragons in the world. He was their guardian and their champion. Pirates might have been for navies and adventurers to seek out, but supernatural evil was precisely why he wore the silly-looking red hat (dragons were never great with the fashion sense).

"Besides, Dyne, before you took on that silly-looking helmet—though that beret you used to go around in was hardly an improvement—"

_Nearly omniscient beings should not be allowed to have sarcastic senses of humor!_ groused Dyne mentally.

"—you would have been after those pirates in a second. A shipload of cutthroats, an innocent girl taken prisoner... it was meat and drink to the young man who went on to become my Dragonmaster. Just because Miss Amelie de Alkirk has an offensive uncle is no reason to leave her at the mercy of kidnapping pirates."

"How about if I just trade the uncle to the pirates for the girl?"

The sound of the Goddess's laughter put a song in Dyne's heart.


	7. Chapter VI

_There, that wasn't too bad, was it? Now I'll return to what I can actually testify to first-hand._

After the _Swiftsure_ and the _Black Fortune_, I decided that the _Fancy_ was ill-named, for it was actually the plainest vessel I'd been on since I'd left Meribia. Still, she was a trim little sloop (I was beginning to pick up on some of that nautical slang), and several hundred times cleaner than any part of Blue Dragon Key I'd seen, so I was not one to complain.

Apparently, the _Fancy_ had been Mel's first command as a pirate captain and his capture of the _Black Fortune_ with her the first spectacular prize that had elevated him to the first rank of buccaneers. He'd handed the sloop to one of his lieutenants, a man named Stede, making it the first of a small squadron or flotilla that Mel had some loose authority over. That was why he was able to use the vessel for this adventure--well, that and the fact that the _Fortune_ could have blown her halfway to the Frontier without half trying. Among pirates, negotiating from a position of strength was considered sound business practice.

Nautically speaking, the _Fancy_ could sail with as few as ten hands and as a merchant ship would have only carried around that many to save her owners the cost of wages and provisions. Stede had manned her with over fifty, those sort of odds being another excellent reason why most mariners surrendered instead of fought when pirates were encountered. For this trip Mel had settled on twenty-five, enough to discourage trouble but likewise enough to keep under control and leave plenty of room in the cargo hold free for bringing back the booty they hoped to rescue from Teach's island.

Mel led the search, of course, with the old man as guide. I was along, as part of the purpose was to keep me out of the way of any potential rescuers. Edgars was there as quartermaster, which I learned to my surprise was the second most important position on a pirate ship; his role was to make a full accounting of the treasure and make certain it was valued for a fair split with those still behind on the _Fortune._ For the rest, Mel had selected officers he trusted: Jack, Ace, Morgan, Patch, and Scrope, to watch his and my backs; the crew consisted of ten hands each from the _Black Fortune_ and the _Fancy_, chosen by lot because each would receive an extra share of treasure for doing the work of risking the reefs and digging up the loot from wherever Van Dierken had buried it.

Stede had remained behind in temporary command of the _Black Fortune_, while Finn and Black Ben would continue negotiations with my family's agent over the ransom. The magician was especially important, because of his education to decipher the blizzard of numbers and complex forms of payment the merchant would try to deluge the "poor, ignorant pirates" with ("We can't raise fifty thousand silver on such short notice, but we can offer twenty thousand and this cargo of silks to make up the difference...") and also because his magic was the pirates' best weapon against the use of brute force. Personally, I wouldn't have handled it that way, but I supposed that Mel knew his people and their trustworthiness better than I did.

That and, since he had both the kidnapping victim and the man who knew the location of the treasure with him on the _Fancy_, any pirate for whom greed outweighed loyalty would probably wait for his return anyway. About the only real risk he was running was that enough officers would get scared of House de Alkirk's revenge and flee in terror. But then, well, Mel would still have a ship, me, and more money than even my Aunt Cybele could run through in a lifetime, with considerably fewer people to share out with.

I suppose that meant that he did know what he was doing, after all.

It had been, I admitted, an almost pleasant four days at sea. I'd been all but given free run of the _Fancy_, since there was little I could do to sabotage her without causing myself as much trouble as the pirates, and I'd thoroughly enjoyed the sea air. Plus, the spirit of adventure and excitement was catching. I'd never done anything half so exciting in my life as sail off in search of the buried treasure of a long-dead pirate captain, and there were moments when I'd stood by the rail, hair whipping in the sea breezes, that it would escape my mind that I was a prisoner, effectively reduced to being an item for barter, and I would instead feel wild and free.

It was in one of those moments that Mel came to stand beside me.

"And what would it be that brings such a smile ta yer face, lass?" he asked, his hands gripping the rail beside mine.

"It feels so exhilarating to be here, racing the waves, in search of adventure! I feel like a little girl again."

"Do ya, now?"

"Yes! It's wonderful beyond words. Almost enough," I added, as his presence began to remind me of my status, "to make me forget what I am."

He missed my meaning completely.

"Well, now, I can't say that adventuring on a pirate ship is what I'd call ladylike behavior, but then ya've probably notice that I ain't what ya'd call an expert in the finer things."

"Or the finer feelings," I said, stung. "I was referring to my status as your prisoner."

"Aye," he said, dipping his head, "that's so."

I looked curiously at him. There was something in his voice that I couldn't understand. The notorious villain Hell Mel was ashamed?

"Ya can't imagine that we'd hurt ya?"

"Even if my parents choose not to pay the ransom?"

He looked poleaxed, which wasn't surprising. The point of kidnapping, after all, was "pay or else." He might easily promise that I would not be harmed or accosted by him or his men, and to give him his due, I believed that. What, though, if my parents proved to be everything Jack Hook suggested they were? No, I couldn't believe they would abandon me for greed's sake, but what of House de Alkirk's family honor? Might they decide that one child was not worth the public loss of face from knuckling under to pirates?

"Then what will you do, Mel? Will you just nod and smile and let me go? Will you give into them? How long would you stay captain in this curious pirate democracy of yours if you did that? And what would you do the next time your ship attacked a prize and its crew remembered that you hadn't done what you said you'd do to me? There'd be a bloody battle, and how many would die? How many people would you have to butcher, and how many of your own crew would have to die doing it, before you reestablished your reputation?"

I was being cruel, I knew. He'd known everything that I'd said before I said it; he was no fool. He'd put me in this position, though, and I was not going to pull any punches. Especially as words were all I had to use against my captor.

"Damn it all, Miss Amelie..."

_So, I'm not "lass" any more?_

Purposely, I turned my back on him and returned to looking out over the waves.

"We both know the truth, Captain. There's no need to dissemble. The threat is worthless without the will to back it up. If the time comes, you will do what is right for your crew. That's the truth of the matter, and we both know it."

What he might or might not have said then was forever lost in the keening cries of white-feathered seabirds, for even as they screeched their displeasure at us for not being a fishing boat, the hand in the crow's nest sang out with that age-old cry, "Land ho!" This turned Mel into the no-nonsense captain at once, all business. I think it was a relief to both of us to have immediate affairs at hand to distract us from the questions I'd raised.

"Shorten sail there, me hearties! Do ya want ta run us aground? Ace, prepare the jolly boat! We'll have ta sound out the reef. And get Teach up here. Time fer the old man ta earn his share o' the treasure."

The crew leapt to obey Mel's orders, furling most of the _Fancy_'s sail to drastically reduce the sloop's speed. As we neared our destination, I could see black, jagged rocks pushing themselves from the water, some barely a foot or two above the waves and some reaching halfway up the mast. Behind them, though, I could catch glimpses of palm trees wreathed in a dull, leaden mist.

"Ahrrr, there she be," cackled Teach as he came on deck, his old seaman's legs still easily adapting his balance to the rolling planks beneath him even with his cane. "Dead Man's Isle, right enough."

"Isn't that name sort of like writing on the map, 'Look for Pirate Treasure Here'?" Morgan asked laconically.

"Bah, she ain't got no name on any sea chart. That's what old Bloodheart called her, on account o' th' prisoners who died so he could hide his plunder."

"Even the man's sense o' humor was wicked," Mel grumbled.

"Whitewater ahead, Cap'n!" one of the lookouts hollered. I ran to the opposite rail, and I could see how, in places, there were swirls of foam caused by water churning over something just beneath the surface. Places, I guessed, where the reefs rose too high for stealth.

"This do be th' tricky part, Cap'n Mel. Ye'll have ter bring yer ship in through th' passage in th' reefs, so as ye can lower th' boat ter go ashore," Teach instructed.

"Why can't we just take the boat in from here?" Ace wanted to know. In response to Mel's orders, he and two hands were getting ready to go ahead with it to check the depth of the reefs.

"On account o' th' current, matey!" Teach cackled. "Th' rocks and th' reef make for a powerful current between 'em, and if yer lowers a boat in th' wrong place ye'll never make it ter the passage inter th' harbor. Ye'll come ter grief or be swept out ter sea, right enough. Ye'd have ter fly iffin' ye wanted ter avoid it all."

"Ace," Mel ordered at once, "make fast the boat ta the _Fancy_ with a strong line, so's ya don't get swept off by that current while yer sounding out the depth."

I had to admit that Van Dierken had picked a well-protected spot. Mariners without any known reason to approach the island would watch boats be wrecked, or lose ships on the reef, and just mark the island as a danger spot to avoid on their charts. As for the pirate, I could only imagine how many lives the cruel captain had thrown away to learn the same path through.

To say that the trip was harrowing was an understatement. Relying on Teach's memory, weakened as it was by decades of time and more bottles of strong drink than I cared to imagine, as well as the depth readings taken by Ace on the jolly boat, we crept through the reef. The trick was made trebly hard by the fact that we relied on the wind for our source of power; although the sloop was easily maneuverable as ships went, I was afraid that some sudden shift in the wind would fling us onto the shoals and rip our bottom out. Half the time I could not bear to watch, and instead turned to observe Mel and his officers bellowing orders and the hands leaping to obey with a vigor and energy that implied they, too, felt the risk of it and were sparing no effort to fight off the danger.

It was on one of those moments that Mel's eyes happened to meet mine. The captain looked at me for a long moment, then said something to Morgan, which unlike his usual bellows that carried from stem to stern, I couldn't overhear. I got the gist of it in a hurry, though, because the pirate came over directly to me.

"Unnerved by our passage, Miss de Alkirk?"

"Shouldn't you be setting sails or something?" I asked nervously. The truth was, seeing any crew member with idle hands frightened me.

"Not if you want them set correctly. On board the _Black Fortune_ I'm what passes for a captain of marines and an armsmaster. My duty is to keep the crew ready for battle, be it with prey or the minions of the law. I'm little more than a green'un when it comes to working aloft."

"If we expected this, I'm surprised that Mel chose the crew by lot instead of picking the very best sailors from the two ships."

"Oh, they were picked by lot--it's the only fair way--but the green hands weren't in the draw, as voted on by the crew. We knew exactly what you're talking about. It's also why the _Fancy_'s sailing master is one of the officers"--he pointed to a grizzled man whose wolflike features proclaimed him to be a full-blooded beastman--"as he knows better than anyone how she handles, all of her little ways."

I smiled weakly.

"That's good to know. Still and all..."

"The prospect of ending on the rocks doesn't appeal? Well, you're not alone there. I'd rather face dangers I can fight instead of trusting someone else to carry me through. Still, I know one thing that ought to give you hope."

"What's that?" I pounced on the offer eagerly.

"According to Teach, the _Balthasar_ made this run at least a half a dozen times--and she wasn't a sloop or schooner or even a brig, but a full-size square-rigged ship at least the size of the _Black Fortune_. The _Fancy_ has a shallower draft and is much more maneuverable than Van Dierken's ship would have been on her best day."

"That is a comfort to know," I said, for indeed it was. Though I could hardly count myself knowledgeable in the various types of ships (what differentiated a "schooner" from a "brig" in Morgan's explanation, for example, completely eluded me), I certainly realized that a small vessel like the _Fancy_ could sail rings around the _Black Fortune_ if the wind cooperated. I'd seen the difference in how they handled for myself in traveling on board them. If the _Balthasar_ could manage the approach, I was sure that we could, so long as Teach didn't run us onto the reef with a defective memory. "Thank you, Morgan."

"Don't thank me," countered the dandy. "The Captain's the one who asked me to try and set you at ease. I think he's taken a liking to you."

"It's too bad he didn't do that before snatching me off the _Swiftsure_."

"Well, it's too bad my father took a liking to my mother before putting a ring on her finger or else I'd not be here either, but we can't change the past." He tipped his hat to me in a gesture that mixed play and gentle mockery. "I shall now take my leave, Miss Amelie, as your fears appear to be eased as much as possible."

An intriguing character, I mused, but then, Mel appeared to have surrounded himself with the intriguing. Quite a number were not at all what I'd have expected, starting with Mel himself. It was no wonder my feelings were all a-tangle. He'd done what Mel asked, though, and as we worked our way to the safe anchorage, I watched and listened to our progress with anticipation rather than fear. Finally, we reached a place where the old man told us to drop anchor, and I could see a sort of channel between the rocks, that curved through them in an arc to reach the island.

"There she be," cackled Teach. "Ye kin pass at high or low tide, but never if th' tide be turnin'."

"Drop anchor, fore and aft!" Mel bellowed, and the crew hustled to obey. By dropping both anchors, the _Fancy_ would have much less room to swing on her tether. If he'd had only a single anchor dropped, the current could have taken the sloop onto rock or reef. "Edgars, ready the longboat with provisions for the trip ashore. Goss, ya'll be in command until we return." Goss proved to be the sailing master. "Pick five o' yer ten ta go ashore, and Edgars, pick four o' the _Fortune's_. Morgan, Jack, Patch, and Scrope'll be with me, and Ace once he gets the jolly boat back aboard, and o' course, Mr. Teach."

"Ahrr, what about th' lass?" Patch growled, pointing to me.

Mel turned my way and looked me over. What he was thinking I didn't know, but my heart jumped when he said, "She'll be coming with us."


	8. Chapter VII

There had been a number of surprised looks at Mel's announcement that I'd be joining the expedition ashore. It was not, however, until I attempted to change position and nearly fell into the sea (I would have, had Patch not caught me by the scruff of the neck like a mother dog rescuing an unruly puppy) that those looks were given voice.

"Beggin' yer pardon, Cap'n, but why'd we have ter bring th' wench along?"

Begging _Mel's_ pardon, indeed! It wasn't Mel he had just called a wench! My irritation at being spoken of in such a fashion distracted me momentarily, so that I did not at first realize that Mel was not immediately responding to the complaint. Indeed, he seemed to just be sitting there, not even rowing his oar, with the oddest look on his face.

"Don't be any more daft that you have to, Patch," Jack said. "You've still got one good eye to see how he feels."

How he..._feels_? Surely, Jack didn't mean--

"That girl's worth a small fortune in silver all by herself. Leave her on the _Fancy_ and maybe Goss figures a ship and a captaincy are worth a little betrayal. Or weren't you paying attention when Teach, here, explained how Bloodheart got himself stuck here in the first place?"

Oh. Of course. I don't know what I was thinking, to see it as anything else.

"Goss wouldn't do that!" argued a slim, red-haired woman named Anne, one of the _Fancy'_s original crew. "You've got no call to be saying those kinds of things about him, or about any of our crew. For that matter, you've got shipmates of your own you're talking about. Don't you even trust your own people?"

"There's something you'll come to learn about Jack," Ace said. "He only trusts one kind of person."

"And who's that?"

"The dead."

"Sounds like they've got a fair bit in common, fer my money," grumbled someone else.

"Stow yer bilge!" Mel cut in sharply. "I'm sick o' hearing ya squabble like rats over the last wheel o' cheese! The lass is here, we're here, and soon enough we'll all be rich men, which is enough fer me ta think on without having ta sort out whether ta crack yer skulls or just makes ya swim ta shore ta shut ya up. Now there's an end ta it!"

He was very convincing, and the subject was dropped all at once. Still, that didn't stop people from thinking about it, and I found myself mulling it over when before I'd hardly considered it. Just why _had_ Mel brought me along? Had it really been to keep the crew left on the _Fancy_ from mutiny? They were pirates, after all...and yet, if there was one thing this experience had taught me, it was that there were pirates, and then there were pirates, not all of them being the same.

Truthfully? I didn't believe that the pirates who sailed under Captain Mel were the kind who would be dishonest enough to sell out their shipmates and stupid enough to do it when said shipmates were hoping to bring back enough treasure that they could retire comfortably. That would be a rare combination of evil and folly.

If even I could figure that out, then it was certain Mel had as well. Despite being huge and powerful, he was by no means the "big and dumb" stereotype I'd once believed him to be. So if he knew that too, then what was his purpose in bringing me along? It did not make sense.

Come to think of it, why had Jack made the claim in the first place? _He _was every bit as distrustful as Ace had made him out to be, but he was also smart--easily bright enough to recognize that his captain was not cut from the same cloth. Unless it was a case of seeing things as he wanted them to be...

I gave up with a sigh (I'd have shaken my head in frustration, but I didn't want anyone asking what I was doing, not to mention my fear that any great movement would again toss me towards the water). My father had always said that if people were acting out of character, then there was something _you_ were missing.

We came through the channel in the rocks easily enough, with the efforts of the men at the oars enough to deal with the current, and came into a kind of lagoon, calm water sheltered by the reefs and rocks from the waves and sea-currents. Now clear of the rocks, we could see a small horseshoe of sand beach and the trees behind, with little contour or elevation to the isle that I could see. The mist I'd noticed before was still there, though, despite the sun in the bright blue sky. It clung to the island like a steel-gray veil, cloaking the details in a blur of mystery.

"Grim place," Ace observed laconically. "Dead Man's Isle isn't a bad name for it, at that."

"Any place that's this hard to get to ought to be prettier, just as a reward for the effort."

"But she is, missy!" argued Teach. "She's got th' fairest o' colors here fer us. Bright gold like liquid fire, an' shinin' silver, an' a rainbow o' jewels. Now, ain't that be better than any green palms or golden sand?"

"To a money-hungry pirate, perhaps."

"Or a money-hungry noble?"

"You should have been an actor, Jack," Ace said. "I've never known you to miss a cue."

"Not that you do, either, Ace," laughed Morgan. "You just have different lines."

The dark-skinned pirate bowed at the waist (without so much as missing an oar-stroke, darn him).

"Just keeping my end up for our little troupe."

"If ya don't mind, fellas," Mel cut in, "we happens ta have serious business ta deal with."

We reached the beach not long after, the pirates dragging the boat safely on shore and beginning to unload their gear, picks, shovels, ropes, sacks, and lanterns.

"We've come this far on yer say-so, Teach," Mel told the old man, "and now it do be time for ya ta come through with the goods. Take us ta the treasure."

Teach's response was not _precisely_ what I'd expected.

He burst out into wheezing, cackling laughter.

"An' jest what makes yer think _I_ know?" he said between bouts of hilarity.

This did not seem to be what Mel and the other pirates had expected from Teach either. There were dark looks, mutters, and more than one cutlass loosened in its sheath.

"Ya'd best be explaining yerself, Teach. If we've come through all this fer nothing but a taproom tale, we'll be leaving ya here ta think over yer lies fer a few decades or so."

"Ye heard me story, Cap'n. Only Van Dierken an' Colvin came back, out o' all those who went ashore. Th' day o' th' shipwreck were th' only time I've set foot on these sands. Th' treasure do be here on this island, but only th' dead know where exactly it be."

"Ya do realize, Teach, that if we don't find anything, ya don't get one silver out o' this?"

"Th' treasure be here, Cap'n; all ye hafta do be ter find it."

"I guess we look, then," I said, which of course got everyone to turn in my direction. Sometimes I think that just because I was a hostage the pirates expected me to sit there like a sack of silver, at least by their surprise whenever I spoke up. Well, I wasn't having it any more. I planted my fists on my hips and faced them down. "Don't give me those stares of disbelief. You've dragged me back and forth across the Meribian Sea, taken me prisoner, mocked my family, and nearly got me killed in that stinking tavern--"

"That was your family's doing, not ours," Morgan interrupted.

"I didn't mean the fight or the fire. I was talking about the smell." I sniffed and tossed my head. "Now you've sailed through reefs and rocks to find the biggest treasure haul ever taken by any pirate in known history, and you're complaining now because you have to search one little island for it? And you call yourselves _pirates_?"

"Harrr!" Mel roared, and clapped me on the shoulder with a heavy hand. "Amelie do have the right o' it. We'll comb this place from stem to stern if we have ta. We haven't come this far ta give up at the last!"

There were a number of cheers and huzzahs from the men; they sounded genuinely inspired by our speeches. I knew I was--gold fever, perhaps? Or the chance to, for the first time in my life, take part in a genuine adventure rather than only reading about one?

_Or maybe it's just that as long as we're hunting the treasure, I don't have to worry about the pirates' other problem--my own fate!_

"Fer now," Mel ordered, "we'll make our camp here. There be a good four hours 'til dusk, so's we'll start exploring right away. Look fer anything suspicious. And remember that Van Dierken be marooned here years ago. If he survived any length o' time, there'll be signs o' it, shelter, fire pit, that kind o' thing. Keep yer eyes open, 'cause a man like that'd be sure ta keep his silver close, seeing as it be all that he had. And watch yer backs!"

"Watch fer what?" one man asked.

"Fer monsters, o' course. None o' us know what be living here, so keep an eye out, less ya wants ta follow the _Balthasar_ ta Blue Dragon's Deep."

Mel quickly divided the crew into several search parties, with one group left at the boat to start setting up camp. We'd have to spend at least one night on the island just because of the hour, and it would be best to have the maximum comfort if we were to make a decent job of it. Ace, Scrope, and I went with Mel himself.

"Now wait a minute, Cap'n. I can sees bringin' her along, like yer says," Patch protested, "but at least she oughter do the cookin', seein' as how she's here."

"And why should she be doing that?"

"Well, she's a girl, ain't she?"

I'd have liked to box his ears for that remark, but one of the female pirates took care of that with a sharp cuff on the back of his head.

"That's fer thinkin' cookin' be women's work, shark bait."

She cuffed him again, just to drive home the point.

"Ow!"

"And just to make the point, before Jack does it for me, may I remind you that as the spoiled and pampered child of the aristocracy, the closest I've come to cooking was to ring for the servants and give them the menu for a luncheon party."

On which note, we were off into the woods.


	9. Chapter VIII

"When Althena brought forth life on Lunar," Ace groused, "did she absolutely have to be so enthusiastic about it?" His complaints were punctuated by a heavy, wet chopping sound as his cutlass hacked through the tentacle-like vines of a flytrapper. "I can understand carnivorous plantlife--eating meat is part of the natural order of things, the food chain and all that--but does it really have to be able to move around after us?"

"Consider it a way to keep the giant bug population in check," Mel joked. His huge axe, which he could wield freely now that he was in the relatively open ground of the forest path, tore apart the creatures with little trouble. To the well-armed pirates they were, in fact, no serious threat, though I did not fancy my own chances if I was caught without an escort. The good news was that they were the only hostile wildlife we had encountered thus far, and only the single pack. Probably there was not enough food on the island to support a large population of them, for which I had no complaints whatsoever.

"Not a lot of 'em, though," Scrope grunted. Using a boarding pike, he'd managed to transfix the last of the creatures and keep it well away from himself where neither its lashing tentacles nor its envenomed maw could hurt him. As it hissed and spat in frustration, Mel moved in on it from the side. His great axe flashed once, and the monster lay still, all but hacked in two. "Usually wilderness forests are crawlin' with critters."

Mel nodded as he cleaned the edge of his weapon. Actually seeing him in battle, I had to admit, was amazing. The single-minded ferocity of his whirlwind attacks were less like that of a fighter and more reminiscent of a force of nature, an avalanche or tidal wave sweeping aside everything in its path. The epithet "Hell Mel" was well-deserved, not for his personality but for the seemingly superhuman power and skill he displayed in battle. I was _very_ glad to be with him here in these misty woods!

"That's true," Ace noted. "But then, this is a small island, and there might not be enough food for a bunch of monsters to eat. Nature kind of seeks a balance--or it just dies out."

Hey! _I'd_ thought of that first!

"Maybe. Wildlife does seem pretty thin," Mel agreed.

"The woods seem quiet," I said nervously. "I'd expected there to be birds chirping, insects buzzing, all kinds of natural sounds. The first thing I've heard is when those things attacked."

"Just stay close to me," Mel advised. "Anything comes looking for ya, it'll still have ta go through me first."

"How gallant--ew!"

His ears drooped, momentarily thinking my exclamation of shock was out of revulsion at him, but when I pointed a trembling hand towards what I'd seen, he realized his mistake.

"What is it, lass?"

"There, by that tree." Even turned to its side, a grinning skull could still send sparks of fear through me. It wasn't threatening or disgusting, but creepy.

"Let's be taking a look at that," Mel said.

"Do we hafta?" Scrope asked.

"Yeah, we do. The _Balthasar_'s crew be the only people ta come here, s'far as we know. That do be a human body, meaning it's either Van Dierken or his mate, or instead one o' their victims."

"And if it's the latter we must be near the treasure!" I exclaimed. "He and Colvin wouldn't murder all their diggers and bearers, then carry the bodies off somewhere else for disposal. Ick." The last exclamation destroyed what had otherwise been a fairly sound piece of deductive reasoning, but I couldn't help it, when the image of the two men carrying corpse after corpse through the woods came into my mind.

Goddess's grace, it even makes me shudder to write it! We each have our weak spots, and this sort of grisly business is clearly mine.

"They wouldn't shirk such a task, Amelie," Ace said, responding (as I'd been afraid someone would) to my tone and apparent revulsion instead of the thought behind what I'd said. "Men like Van Dierken don't have any fine sensibilities or respect for the dead. They'll kill for the pleasure of it, then make whatever use of the bodies profits them most."

"I know," I said with another shudder of disgust, "but that isn't what I meant. I only thought that carrying all the bodies, one by one or even two by two, to some location far enough away from the treasure site as not to be a clue, would be a great deal of effort for a very speculative profit."

"And if he meant ta do that much work ta begin with, he'd have just buried the bloody treasure himself and not bothered with the prisoners in the first place. There always was the chance they'd turn on him and get lucky with a shovel or pick ta win their freedom. So's unless he was the kind o' bastard who kills fer the fun o' it, Van Dierken weren't going ta get his hands dirty with more manual labor than he had ta."

Mel's argument pleased me--more, indeed, than it probably should have. I had much the same reaction to what Ace next said.

"I'm sorry about that, Amelie; I didn't realize you'd thought it all through."

"Well, we fine ladies ought to be good for _something_," I replied sassily, my fears banished momentarily by their approval. "Even if only to truly confound Jack's opinion of my social class."

Ace grinned broadly, showing pearly white teeth. How he managed such good dental hygiene during a life at sea I will never know.

"If you can manage _that_, girl, than Althena will have to move over and make room for another goddess!"

"'Ey, enough chatter!" Scrope put in. "Ye kin gab all ye wants ter _after_ we get rich."

"He has," Ace admitted, "a point."

The good feeling went away very quickly as we turned our attention back to the remains. I conjured up any number of grim details in my imagination, from scraps of leathery flesh clinging to the bones to rotting shreds of clothing stained by old blood, so I was quite relieved when the men cleared away the undergrowth to reveal only the bleached white bones of a skeleton, nothing more.

"No way ta tell who he'd be, now," Mel grumbled.

"Well, he must have been a pirate," I said, pointing to its only distinguishing feature, a badly rusted saber beneath the bones of his right hand. "A prisoner wouldn't have been armed." I held out my own empty hands as an example.

"Harrr, ya be right, lass. And look here." Mel pointed his big finger to the inside edge of one of the neck vertebrae. There was a deep groove running horizontally in the bone. "His throat's been cut, and not kindly, either, ta go so deep."

I had to fight to keep my stomach contents in place, which let the much less easily disgusted Ace voice his conclusions first.

"That means he's one of the novices Teach told us about, new crew members who didn't know that only Van Dierken and his crony ever returned from Dead Man's Isle...if you'll forgive the melodrama."

"And if that's the case, the treasure can't be far!" Scrope said.

"Something's strange about that, though," Mel said, his grim tone a sharp contrast to our rising excitement.

"What is it?" I asked.

"The body be too perfect, ya see."

"Um, no, I don't see."

"When ya've been a pirate fer as long as me, ya get ta see yer fair share o' bodies and more. None too many o' them are as neat and pretty as this one. There's nothing here but his sword. Now, it do have been forty-five years, so's I can see how the flesh and clothing be gone, but what about metal?"

"The saber's metal," Ace said, but he was starting to get the same look as his captain.

"But so would be belt buckles, earrings, finger-rings, parts of weapon sheaths, loose change in his pockets, and possibly other things," I said, following Mel's reasoning.

"Stolen? Nah. Bloodheart'd loot the bodies by all accounts, but he wouldn't have left the saber. Back when it was in decent condition it could have fetched a decent price, or the crew might have used it--there's always somebody on a pirate ship that could use another weapon."

"So's he wasn't looted, and the body's all here, laying out nice and pretty, so's he weren't..." Mel glanced at me, then broke off, leaving Scrope to finish up the thought.

"Chewed up by some monster, clothes an' all?"

I was getting better; the thought made me decidedly queasy, but that was all.

"Damn yer eyes, Scrope!" Mel bellowed. "Can't ya see there's a lady present who don't appreciate yer rough tongue?"

"You're getting a mite protective of Amelie, aren't you, Captain?" Ace murmured, causing me to blush and Mel to get an odd kind of poleaxed look. I don't think he knew whether he was supposed to get mad or whether that would just sink him in deeper.

"Never mind all that," I said quickly. "Come on, let's get looking for that treasure. We can solve the mystery of just how that skeleton came to be as it is later."

The phrase "famous last words" would apply to that, as you no doubt have realized already.


	10. Chapter IX

As we expanded our search into the undergrowth away from the path, we encountered no further monsters. Unfortunately, we also found no signs of the treasure.

"Y'don't think he buried it?" asked Scrope.

"And then the spot was hidden? Could be, but remember that he wouldn't have buried it in the middle of the woods," Ace said. "Wherever the treasure is, it's either some place Van Dierken could easily remember or a place he could accurately guide himself back to. Buried in the middle of a nest of shrubbery doesn't work for either. Of course, this might have been an open spot forty-five years ago, and the forest just grew over it. There certainly wouldn't be any sign of turned earth after all those years."

"Yer not makin' me any happier here, Ace."

The one thing we did find was two more skeletons, both stripped bare like the first one. Of the two, one still had its weapon, a cutlass as rusted and pitted as the first's saber, while the third had gone into death unarmed.

"Am I the only one getting more than a little frightened by this?" I said. The answer I received from Mel was very simple and to the point.

"No, yer not."

"And it's getting dark," Ace added.

"We'd best be heading back, then," Mel decided. "We'll compare notes with the others, and if they ain't found something better to try we'll head back here with the whole pack o' 'em fer a proper search."

I knew that I'd be glad to get out of the mist-shrouded woods to a warm fireside by the open shore, and I had a feeling that I wasn't the only one. The tree cover and the fog alike made the darkness come on fast, so Ace lit a lantern.

The rattling sound nearly made me jump out of my skin. It was a dull clunking, like several pieces of hard wood being shaken together in a pot. We all spun around, expecting anything from a false alarm to an attack by whatever _thing_ had left the macabre souvenirs lying around this area of the forest.

What we didn't expect was to see the first skeleton we'd discovered standing upright, its saber clutched in its bony hand. With one quick movement it chopped with the rusty weapon, and Scrope went down in a spray of blood; he'd been too horror-struck to defend himself.

I screamed in terror then, my cry echoed by a bellow of rage from Mel. Drawing his huge axe, he charged at the animated bones as the skeleton's jaw fluttered and a keening laugh echoed from its skull, ripe with unholy pleasure at the death it had caused.

Swung with tremendous force, the great blade crashed down into the skeleton's left collarbone, shattering it on its way to hew through the shoulder-blade and ribcage. The horror's arm fell to the ground and lay still, but the rest of the thing kept coming. Joining Mel, Ace parried the monster's thrust with his cutlass, then thrust in riposte. His blade merely glanced off bone and slid between two ribs in what would surely have inflicted a mortal wound to a living man but did nothing at all to the skeleton, for it had no organs to pierce or blood to use.

Mel's axe was considerably more effective, on account of its great weight and the tremendous power behind its swing. His second blow crushed the jeering skull, and the horror dropped to the ground, inert.

"In Althena's name, what is _happening_ here?" I exclaimed.

"Ya got me, lass, but it be as dark as a pitchy night and foul as the Vile Tribe itself," Mel growled. "Is Scrope going ta make it, Ace?"

The other pirate bent to check his fallen shipmate, then shook his head sadly.

"He's gone, Captain."

"Another good man dead. Too damned much o' that lately."

There was a rustling in the undergrowth, and I suddenly had cause to remember the other two skeletons we'd found. Would they rise up and fight as well? They and how many others on this accursed island? _Dead Man's Isle._ Van Dierken's name for his treasure-cache had been a blacker joke than we'd known.

"Come on! Let's get back to the beach!"

"Right. We can join with the others and get out ta sea if we have ta."

So we ran for it, retreating the way we'd come down the forest paths, the lantern bobbing and shaking in Ace's hand as the night and the fog closed in around us, shrinking our tiny oasis of light down to almost nothing. We couldn't stop and check our hand-sketched map as we fled, so I could only pray that we didn't fall foul of any wrong turnings in the gloom. Every instant I expected skeletal hands to come reaching out of the shadow, an antique blade in an undead grip shearing down to kill, but as it turned out the first enemy I faced was not a monster but myself. By no means was I any kind of trained athlete; even walking through the tangled forest was more exercise than I was used to. Sprinting out the way we'd come strained me to my limits. In far, far too little time my legs throbbed with the pain of exertion, my lungs burned painfully, unable to suck in air as fast as my body was consuming it, and my strides had degenerated into stumbling lurches more fit for the monsters than their prey.

It was almost inevitable that it would happen sooner or later. I could not even be certain, so intent was I upon making myself run and keeping up with the lantern, whether my toe caught a stray root or stone, my foot skidded on a patch of loose earth, or I simply overbalanced from exhaustion. One moment I was running, and the next I found myself sailing forward to tumble flat on my face on the hard-packed path. A very unladylike grunt of pain followed, but it probably saved my life.

"Amelie!" Mel roared, spinning around.

I made a few inarticulate moans of pain; the wind had been knocked out of me and I really didn't feel up to comprehensible speech just then.

"She can't stand this pace, Captain."

"I ain't leaving her for those bony devils!"

An instant later I felt strong hands lifting me. Mel had hoisted me up into his arms as easily as if I'd been a tiny mouse rather than a grown woman. I looked up into his eyes, surprised he was doing this and yet somehow not.

"Don't worry," he said. "I'll get ya safe outta these woods."

"Can...can you run while carrying me?"

He flashed me a broad, toothy smile.

"A little thing yer size? Just watch and see."

He was as good as his word. We seemed to fly down the forest trail, his long legs eating up the distance in massive strides that actually seemed to be faster than we'd been going before. Even Ace was left puffing for breath trying to keep pace, but unlike me he had the wind to stay the course. At last we burst free of fog and shade, emerging out onto the beach.

There was a fire burning about a hundred yards down the shore from where we'd emerged and the silhouette of figures were clustered around it. Though the coastline looked different at night, I realized that this was where the longboat had landed, sending a titanic surge of relief through me. It seemed like we reached it in a heartbeat, and Mel swept me down to my feet, his touch so light that I did not even sink into the soft sand.

"Dragon dung, Cap'n, where have you been? You said we were supposed to meet back here at dusk., And why were you running? Where's Scrope?"

"Really, Jack, don't be such a wife," Ace teased, making the one-handed man flush in the firelight. I didn't have the energy or the spirit to joke, but for Ace it seemed to be the natural reaction to tension. Mel turned out to be more on my side of things.

"Scrope's dead."

"Don't tell me one of those stupid flytrappers got him?" Morgan protested. Apparently his group had encountered them as well. "Or did he just fall into one of those dug holes and break his neck?"

"No. Did any o' the rest o' ya run across any skeletons?"

There were nods all around; apparently the only ones who hadn't were the pirates who'd remained at the shore to set up camp.

"All kinds of them," Morgan said. "We couldn't figure out how they got there."

"I'd suggest they got up and walked," Ace said.

Nervously, I glanced back towards the edge of the woods. No bone-white figures had yet emerged. Perhaps the restless dead had given up the chase, or perhaps they simply could not leave their fog-shrouded sanctuary.

"Cap'n, yer means that th' dead walk here?" Patch babbled, his single eye wild.

"That's right. We found skeletons, too, and at sundown they came to life and attacked."

"Sundown. That's when _that_ started, too." Jack pointed out to sea with his hook. Mel, Ace, and I all looked, and we could see in the starlight that the formerly placid lagoon had become a frothing torrent of whitecaps and swirling currents. "If we tried to put to sea now, the longboat'd be ripped apart before we got a hundred feet from shore."

"So we're trapped here?" bellowed a pirate. "We can't get off th' island? Th' rest o' th' crew can't get ter us? An' th' dead be walkin' here ter kill us?"

"That's a pretty good summary, Condent," Ace agreed.

"Dead Man's Isle," Mel growled, then he suddenly rounded on Teach. One big hand fastened around the old man's throat, and he hoisted the scrawny ex-pirate into the air. Teach's eyes went wide with shock and he thrashed and kicked, trying to break loose, but Mel effortlessly held him aloft. "Talk, ya backstabbing seventh son of a sea rat! How much o' this did ya know? This ain't coincidence, is it?"

"I didn't...I didn't..."

"No more o' yer lies!" the captain roared, his voice echoing out across the starlit beach. Though the water seethed and churned as if tossed by a hurricane wind, not a breath of air stirred along the shore. "Me crew's put their necks on the line for ya, and ta chase yer stories o' treasure. Now I wants the truth o' it right here and now, or I'll pop yer head off yer twiggy little neck and let ya join yer shipmates!"

"Um, Cap'n, not ter disturb ye when yer busy," Patch spoke up, "but I'm thinkin' we got more important things ter worry about than wringin' that snake's neck."

He pointed back towards the woods, where we all could see the white of bone gleaming in the night. The skeletons had come out, standing in a ragged line as if ready to launch a charge. None had even the barest scrap of clothing or flesh; like the ones we'd faced before the vile magic animating them was obvious not merely from the fact that they moved and fought but that their bones were a single, unified skeleton despite not being held together by ligaments or even wires. These grinning images of death torn from a pirate's black flag were subject only to the laws of the unholy spells that had awakened them from their eternal rest.

Mel dumped Teach back onto the sand with a thump and reached for his axe.

"They says a real pirate ain't afraid o' death," he growled harshly. "I just never figured it was supposed ta be taken literally."

Then, as if someone--or some _thing_--had heard the joke, keening peals of laughter burst out across the dunes.


	11. Chapter X

When the thing first appeared, it was little more than a glowing sphere of sickly gray light--shining brightly but tainted as if there was something dark and diseased just beneath the radiance. It began to take shape quickly, though, elongating into a humanoid form and then resolving itself into features. The image was translucently pale at first, no more than an aura, then steadily began to take on solidity and color. The process seemed to happen from the inside out, so that for a moment we had the disconcerting sight of seeing a death's head showing through the flesh of the face. As it materialized, the laughter became less of a crazy sound from another world, becoming harsher and deeper, the voice of a man rather than a fiend.

Though, even in life the creature that stood before us might well have been more the latter than the former.

It was easy for us to tell that what faced us was a spirit and no human being, even though it appeared to our eyes to be as solid as ourselves. The gray radiance still seemed to shine from its ghostly-pale flesh, and although the face seemed no more than that of a man in middle age, the hair was as pale as the skin, as if the color had been all but bleached from its unliving form by its translation into whatever unholy state it now inhabited. Its clothes--and these were as fancy as anything Morgan wore or even a dandified fop of my own social background--had seemingly escaped this fate, but had instead been subjected to the ravages of age. What had once been finery suitable for any lord was now worn and ragged, even down to the drooping and broken blue plume in his cocked hat. The one thing that did not appear haunted in any way was the hilt of the straight-bladed sword whose sheath hung at his left hip from a shoulder sling. _That_ was brightly polished and in perfect condition--and I had no doubt that the blade would be as well.

"Welcome!" his voice boomed out, deep and loud like rolling thunder. "Welcome to Dead Man's Isle, my fellow buccaneers."

"We be no fellows o' yers, Bloodheart Van Dierken, in this life or the next!" Mel roared right back while several of us (yes, including me--but I was the damsel in distress, _supposed_ to cower!) shrank back and cringed before the undead host.

The ghost--who may not have introduced himself, but we were all sure to our very souls that Mel was right and that this was Van Dierken back from his unhallowed grave--threw back his head and laughed again, the sound echoing out across the dunes. Behind him, his "skeleton crew" mimicked him, laughing and gibbering despite their lack of flesh.

"Oh, you're not, are you? You didn't come here in search of the _Cape Matapan_ treasure, then? You didn't want to slake your boundless lust for silver in the ill-gotten gains I won by sweat and blood and pain?"

"Sweat an' blood an' pain?" laughed Anne, the female pirate who'd upbraided Patch for assuming I could cook. I was definitely beginning to like her. "Ye just stole it, deadman; ye didn't give birth ter it!"

"And the only blood ya shed was the blood o' yer victims," roared out Mel, "some o' whom were yer own crew. Ya were a damned ghoul when ya were alive, so's it's no surprise ta me that yer still one now!"

I expected Van Dierken to burst into a rage or do something just as volatile, but instead he just laughed for a third time.

"Whether you like it or not, you've chased my legacy here, and from now on you'll belong to me, body and soul. As for your ship, Hell Mel, it will make a fine replacement for my own lost vessel."

"How'd ya know me name, Bloodheart?"

"The dead know many things."

"Well, then, in that case..." Mel raised his axe into the ready position for a swing. "Ya probably already know that the only way yer getting me crew or me ship is over me cold, dead body!"

For a fourth and final time, the ghost captain's laughter rang out across the shore.

"Know it? Why, Captain Mel, I'm positively _counting_ on it!" In one smooth motion he drew his sword and leveled it at us. "Get them!"

At Van Dierken's command, the skeletons charged towards us in an eerie imitation of a pack of howling raiders. Not all of them attacked, though; several of the undead horrors faded back into the woods, leaving only about two dozen in the assault. Some part of me was asking why this was happening, why Van Dierken was not simply sending all of his unholy horde after us. This was, however, quite the lesser part of my thoughts.

The rest of me was assuming the much more traditional attitude for a damsel in distress, namely cringing in fear. The skeletons rushed towards us not in the slow, uncoordinated movements associated with the living dead, nor the artificial jerking of puppets or marionettes. Instead, they ran just as they would have in life, despite lacking the muscles and flesh to do so. I found this incredibly eerie, for it went beyond mere magical manipulation of the corpses to make me feel as if, somehow, the spirits of the undead beings were still there, caught in a devilish slavery by their ghostly captain.

More than one crossbow twanged, launching a good half-dozen bolts at the onrushing skeletons. Several just glanced off, gouging chips of bone from where they struck, while one stuck macabrely between a skeleton's ribs, the shaft hung up in the cage of bone. None, of course, had any effect; I'd seen the uselessness of piercing and stabbing weapons myself in the earlier fight.

"Go fer the skulls, mateys!" Mel bellowed, and suited his actions to his words, meeting the undead charge with a sweeping overhand swing of his great axe that crushed a skeleton's head and turned it into a pile of bones at his feet.

Following Mel's advice proved to be more of a problem for some of Mel's crew than others. Patch, for example, had eschewed the finesse of a sword or cutlass for the practicality of a sturdy boarding axe, a weapon better suited to his strength, bulk, and lack of speed. He was in his element, chopping with a single-minded intensity that seemed more like a lumberjack felling trees or a blacksmith pounding metal on an anvil than a warrior in battle. Morgan, on the other hand, found his fancy dueling sword almost useless. The style of combat it was designed for was all about thrusts to the vital organs, and the blade far too light to be able to smash bone. A cutlass, at least, had that saving grace; though it wasn't meant for this kind of fight it was at least able to accomplish the task.

More than one pirate fell before the rusting weapons and clawing hands of the skeletal horde. Men and women fought and died all around me, and I could do nothing but cower and watch them face this monstrous evil. In all my life, I do not think I have ever felt more truly worthless as I did in the early moments of that battle.

The sight that finally galvanized me to action was that of Morgan, with two bony claws locked tightly around his throat, futilely beating on his undead assailant's skull with the hilt of his sword. The dandified pirate had always treated me with courtesy, despite his being one of my captors; I didn't want to see him die. No one else was moving to rescue him, for they were each desperately confronting their own problems. Even Mel was having trouble, if only because the skeletal horrors insisted on swarming upon him three and four at a time, no doubt at Van Dierken's command.

Desperately, I rushed to the longboat, seized up an oar, and took a mighty two-handed swing with all my strength.

I would _like_ to say that my attack heroically crushed in the monster's bony cranium, saving Morgan and proving my worth. I could probably even get away with it, since it isn't likely anyone else is ever going to tell this tale for publication. But, in truth, I simply wasn't strong enough to get the job done. I did, however, succeed in my primary goal of saving Morgan's life, because the oar ricocheted off the skeleton's skull and struck an arm, knocking half of its grip free. At once, Morgan saw his chance and pried himself loose by using both arms and his body weight against the one remaining hand.

"A spirited wench, then, is she?" Van Dierken's voice roared out. Where had he come from so quickly? It was almost as if he'd just appeared from thin air before us. "But not quite so spirited as she will be!"

I thought I was a dead woman, then, as the point of his sword arrowed at my chest, but Morgan returned the favor I'd granted him, his blade slicing up and deflecting the thrust with an expert parry.

"Really, Van Dierken, you're a legendary pirate. You might be a devilish fiend, but you should at least have the dignity to sail clear of such execrable puns!"

Their blades rang together in the endless dance of steel that was expert fencing, and it soon became apparent that while the dead man was no amateur at the game, the living one was the true master between them. I could scarcely follow the swift sequence of moves, but somewhere Van Dierken made a mistake, and Morgan lunged, driving several inches of the blade into the ghost pirate's breast. I gave a tiny gasp of excitement at seeing the monster laid low.

I really should have known better.

Morgan's sword met no resistance going in, not from clothing, flesh, nor breastbone. The dueling blade slid out just as easily, drawing no blood and apparently giving Van Dierken no trouble in the least. Morgan was obviously taken aback by this reminder that he fought a dead man, because Van Dierken was able to crash his own sword down near the pirate's hilt and knock Morgan's blade from his grip.

Patch chose that moment to step up behind the ghost captain and swing his axe in a mighty cleaving blow to the skull.

"Damn yer eyes, Morgan; fer these dead things yer supposed ter go fer th' head!" he barked as the axe hammered home, but his confidence was misplaced. When he pulled the weapon free, Van Dierken's flesh seemed to flow back into place, the wound healing over even down to the slash in his bicorned hat.

"There's a difference between captain and crew!" Van Dierken laughed at Patch. "I'd suggest you learn the lesson now, unlike my old friend Teach." He swung a vicious cut at the one-eyed sailor, slashing a gouge in his cheek, then pivoted back to Morgan. His dead-white hand reached out and fastened on Morgan's throat, and the pirate began to gasp and choke. I swung my oar again, with predictable results. Van Dierken let Morgan drop, then seized the oar and wrenched it away from me.

"Your turn next, then," he declared. Morgan had collapsed to the ground, still as the grave, and I had a feeling I'd be joining him very soon. Where Bloodheart Van Dierken was concerned, death appeared to be contagious.

"Amelie!"

Mel's enraged bellow kindled up hope inside me despite my desperate circumstances. An instant later that hope was realized as his big shoulder thrust between myself and the ghost, pushing me away from danger, and he swung at Van Dierken's head. He didn't use his giant axe, but instead his massive clenched fist, and blessed be Althena, the contact made the dead captain's head snap backwards just as if he'd been a live man, even making him stumble back a couple of paces.

My elation was cut short at once by Mel's scream of pain; he dropped to his knees, clutching at the hand that had struck the blow and shuddering convulsively. I think I screamed, too; I know that I found myself frantically clutching at Mel's shoulders, trying to see what was wrong.

Van Dierken tossed back his head and laughed.

"Well, then, that's enough fun for now, so my crew and I will be taking our leave of you. Of course, you might not be so eager to see the last of me--at least, if you don't want your friend, there, to have joined my crew before dawn. I'm sure my old mate Teach will be glad to show you the way. He's been so good at it thus far."

In an instant the ghost captain had shrunk back to the glowing sphere as he'd first appeared, and it flew off faster than any bird. The skeletons that had not joined the attack faded away into the treeline. Van Dierken's mocking laughter seemed to hang over all of us for long moments in his wake, as for the first time I realized what real terror felt like.


	12. Chapter XI

"I want answers, Teach, and if ya knows what be good for ya, they'll be coming quick and easy."

I'd never seen Mel in a true, towering rage before, and it was a sight to behold. It wasn't so much the raised voice, which I'd heard, or the angry scowl, which I'd seen. There was something else, an almost tangible aura he seemed to project around himself which carried the weight of his emotion. Once or twice I'd even thought I saw the night air shimmer. Perhaps it did; there are all kinds of stories about the way great warriors' skills can be almost like magic, and Mel was undeniably a great warrior.

That kind of anger is supposed to be a terrifying thing, especially to someone like myself who was so new to any kind of violence, but it didn't bother me in the least, probably because I was feeling it right along with Mel, as was every crew member still standing. The horror of the walking skeletons and the ghost captain, the sorrow at seeing friends and allies killed, they had all congealed together, as if being vented through the only possible outlet. Our spirits wanted something, anything, to fight back against, and Teach was it. Six of the fifteen pirates were dead, several wounded, and Morgan...

I didn't know what had happened to Morgan. Van Dierken's clutch at his throat had done _something_, certainly, but I had no idea what. The dapper pirate lay comatose, fever-wracked with a sheen of sweat glistening in the Blue Star's light. None of our attempts to bring him around had been able to bring any response, not even with antidotes or holy water. Judging from Van Dierken's threats about dawn, a simple death would probably seem a mercy.

Mel grabbed the front of Teach's ragged shirt and lifted the bent old man off the ground. To an outsider, I supposed it would like the rankest bullying, the huge pirate manhandling the withered, pathetic figure, but I knew differently. An evil mind did not demand a strong body, and Teach had the most evil mind of all those on the island who were still alive.

"Give over, ya back-biting spawn o' sea slime phlegm!"

Mel shook the old cutthroat with enough force to make Teach's teeth rattle if he'd had any that matched up.

"Ahrrr! I told yer true right enough," Teach coughed out. "Th' island do be here, don't it? That do be Van Dierken's ghost and none other. This do be his treasure store, like I'd told yer."

"Ya seem ta have left some parts out," Mel roared, giving him another shake.

"Mebbe so, but not o' _that_ story. Seeing what I didn't tell yer was that when we came aboard with Van Dierken, we signed his articles in our own blood."

"A contract signed in blood? That's like something out of a bad Lytonese opera!" I mocked.

"Not entirely," Ace explained. "Articles are the ship's rules governing conduct on board, division of plunder, compensation if you get a leg cut off, and that kind of thing. Most of us prefer to sign in ink, though, and save the blood for when people start _breaking_ the articles."

I was relieved that I hadn't been _completely_ wrong.

"I thought it'd be rank superstition meself, but he owns me soul now, he does, an' he'll not let it go if I don't do as he commands."

"He _owns_ yer _soul_?"

"An' how'd yer be feelin' if yer did hear the voice of a dead men in yer heart, and yer not even havin' a jigger or two o' rum in yer belly ter blame it on? I tried ter convince meself it were jest th' black dog on me back, but it kept comin' again an' again 'til I couldn't resist it no more. He said I'd signed on ter be his, an' that by runnin' I'd broken faith with th' company. He knew everything I'd done, ahrrr, as if he'd been there watchin' as I did it! Iffin' I didn't do as he said, I'd be his ter command after me death."

"And this be what he ordered?"

"I was ter bring a ship an' crew ter Dead Man's Isle, but it weren't so easy as all that. I had a mind ter be savin' me own skin, so's I couldn't ask just any buccaneer, as I told yer. Likewise, I couldn't tell me tale ter the law or ter a merchant like th' little missy there, on account o' they got friends an' relations as would be curious when th' first ship went missin', or so's I figgered. Cap'n Van Dierken weren't too clear as ter th' particulars o' what he wanted, but it didn't take an education ter sees as he didn't mean them any good. I tried a couple o' times before, but yer the first ones as did believe me."

"Lucky us," remarked Ace.

"Ya stinking coward!" bellowed Mel. "Ya'd send a whole crew o' sailors into the hands o' this fiend, just ta save yer own hide?"

"It'd be me soul I'd been worryin' over, not me life alone, Cap'n, and ter puts it bluntly, I'd be preferrin' ter take a chance on Althena forgivin' me if I did do as Bloodheart said than on Bloodheart forgivin' me if I didn't. T'ain't pretty, but there it be."

"Just out of curiosity," Ace said offhandedly, "while you were showing all this newfound trust in Althena's mercy, did you ever consider visiting your local shrine and seeing if the Goddess could do something about freeing your soul from Van Dierken's curse?"

"Eh?"

"Somehow, I didn't think so."

"And I think," said Jack, "that if this bastard's fate is to spend his afterlife as Van Dierken's slave, then we should speed him on his way." He raised his cutlass, the fresh nicks in its edge from chopping through bone sending back glints of light and making the weapon look all the more menacing.

"Aye, the backbitin' swine deserves it," Patch agreed, the crusted blood on his cheek a badge of where his opinions came from.

"But what about Morgan?" I put in.

I don't know why I'd spoken up. It's not as if I had any record of success in these pirate conclaves. There was a part of me, besides, that was as bloodthirsty as Jack Hook. Seeing Teach put to a painful death out of revenge would be a positive step against the fear, a brazenly defiant act saying, _See? We can do something against the evil that killed our friends!_

Maybe that was it. Maybe some other part of me saw then what is so easy to see now, that killing Teach would do absolutely nothing against the evil in question, that quite apart from perfectly reasonable resentment of one who'd betrayed us, our anger at Teach was truly driven by how ineffectual we'd been against the ghostly Van Dierken...how scared we were of him.

"If Van Dierken was telling the truth, then we only have until dawn to save Morgan--and not just from death, but something considerably worse. Teach is the only lead we have here!"

"She's got a point there," Ace mused, "but it's still making a rather large assumption."

"Namely, that Bloodheart can be believed. I can't think that he means ta do the pretty with us when we follow his orders," Mel confirmed.

"So, you're just going to leave Morgan to become...what? A ghost, trapped here like Van Dierken?" I shuddered at the idea.

Mel gave me a long, thoughtful look.

"Ya really think so?"

He glanced from me to Teach, then back to where Morgan lay in the sand, then gave a deep sigh. He dumped the old pirate back onto the beach.

"All right, Teach, here's how it's going to be." He jabbed a big finger at the man for emphasis. "Yer going ta lead us ta Van Dierken like he said. Only, at the first sign o' a trap, I'll cut ya down like the dirty shark-bait ya are, and ya kin find out fer yerself if Bloodheart has yer soul in his fist or not. Ya get me?"

Teach gulped, his Adam's-apple bobbing nervously, almost as fast as his head was.

"Good."

Mel turned back to the rest of us.

"Ya know what's ta happen. We'll be going after Bloodheart and all his bony brigands. Regardless o' what he told us, if he put a curse on Morgan, then I'm figuring it'll be gone only when Van Dierken himself is, once and fer all. I'll not be ordering ya ta come with me, not fer this, but I'll be glad o' any o' ya what's got the courage ta try their luck against the old man with the scythe."

"So, you're going off after a skeleton crew, tireless hordes of undead against whom half our weapons don't even work," Ace outlined the situation, "and who are led by a ghost captain against whom _none_ of our weapons seem to work. We don't have a magician, not even a hedge-wizard, we don't have a priest to call down Althena's justice on Van Dierken, and we don't even have a magic sword or two that might be able to slay the dead."

"Aye."

"On the other hand, while you did seem able to hurt the ghost with your bare hand, just touching it hurt you considerably more than you did him."

"Aye," Mel said again, flexing his left hand. Striking Van Dierken had blasted and burned his hand as if he'd thrust it into fire; the flesh had been charred and blackened, sometimes even to the point that the finger bones had been exposed. Thankfully, multiple healing nuts had cured the damage but for a few spots where the skin was still red and raw.

"And meanwhile, it's entirely possible that Bloodheart did whatever he did to Morgan solely for the purpose of inspiring us to do precisely what you're proposing to do?"

"Aye," said Mel for the third time.

"Just checking. I'm in."

"Yer a crazy man, ya know that?"

"No, no, that's Jack's job. I'm just following my captain. Besides, if it were me laying there instead of Morgan, I'd want him to do what he could for me, to at least try."

Mel shook his head in surprise or disbelief.

"You'd better count me in too," pitched in Jack. "After all, like Ace said, being the crazy one is my job, and I don't want to be accused of dereliction of duty."

"Althena protect us all. Did Jack Hook truly just crack a joke, and at his own expense, no less?"

"No, you're probably just hallucinating from all the shocks you've had since we got here."

"Yes, that's more likely."

Patch clucked his tongue.

"Ahrrr, Cap'n, I'd better throw in me lot with yers, too. Yer going ter need a real pirate at'cher back, not these two an' their fancy talkin' ways."

It kept on going like that, as the other four survivors, Anne and three men named Lowe, Condent, and Hornigold, spoke up and affirmed their desire to risk life and limb walking into a trap set by an apparently unkillable ghost. I supposed that when nearly every outpost of civilization wants to hang you, you develop a certain facility for "gallows humor."

(Apparently, it's contagious.)

"Har!" Mel bellowed when the last man was done. "Ya makes me proud ta be yer captain, and I'll wager that's something Bloodheart Van Dierken couldn't say on his best day."

"Well, it isn't like he had much to work with," Ace noted with a glance at Teach, "but thanks anyway."

"Now, lass," Mel said to me, "as ya be the only one ta stay here, I'm counting on ya ta--"

I raised both my hands in a "Stop!" gesture.

"Hold it! You're not going to be leaving me behind by myself!"

"Yer not a fighter, Miss de Alkirk, and so's ya should stay here, safe. Besides, this way ya can look after Morgan."

I shook my head violently.

"Morgan doesn't need any special looking after. Either you'll succeed and he'll be fine, or...well, you don't need me here, by any rate. Like you said, I'm not a fighter and I'm not a magician, so I couldn't protect him even if some normal, living predator came down from the woods or up from the sea."

"That's so...but as for ya staying safe, that's another story."

"Safe? What makes you think that I'd be safe here? Six people just _died_ here, even if you're probably right that Van Dierken is waiting for you to go to him."

_Quit being such a coward, Amelie!_ I told myself. _Just say what you mean!_

I took a deep breath.

"Besides, Mel, the safest thing I could find for myself on this island...is wherever you are."

It was hard to tell in the darkness, but I could have sworn that the notorious Hell Mel blushed bright pink.


	13. Chapter XII

Hacking our way through the tangle of jungle wilderness by night wasn't any easier than it had been during the day. Between the fog and the tree cover, it was as dark as pitch, and without the lamps we'd have walked square into tree trunks more times than we could count. The only good side was that the flytrappers and any other natural hazards were nowhere to be found; either they were purely diurnal hunters or else they were bright enough to leave the night to the _super-_natural hazards--unlike us. _We_ were walking right towards the heart of it. My palms were sweaty with nerves and fear; I probably would have dropped the cutlass I'd been given (it had belonged to the late quartermaster, Edgars, which I tried not to think too much about) had I not kept it in a two-handed grip.

"Say," Patch commented, chopping his way past a tangle of vines, "how's it that Teach knows where we be goin', if he never set foot on th' island afore now?"

"Probably Van Dierken told him," I guessed. "That 'hearing his voice in Teach's soul' effect, most likely."

"Or Teach might just have been lying," noted Jack.

"Or that, yes."

My hem snagged on a sharp bit of undergrowth, and I pulled it free impatiently, ripping the cloth. This dress was never going to be the same; it would have to be cleaned and repaired just so I could give it to charity. I wished that I'd had the foresight to beg a change of clothing from one of the female pirates before going ashore. Not that it really mattered, as we were walking towards what would likely be certain death.

At the very least, Teach did seem to have some idea where it was we were going, for he kept to a steady pace without pausing or having to think about his direction, which was quite remarkable given the miserable conditions. We went up a slight slope, then seemed to be working our way down again in a gentle corkscrew descent. The thought struck me that perhaps the island had been formed by a volcano whose tip just protruded above the waves, and as if it was long extinct the rich, mineral-laden soil formed by volcanic ash had become overgrown with lush vegetation. We did not have to descend far, no more than fifty feet in all, so that if it was a volcano it must have been unspeakably ancient for its lip to have crumbled away so far. Nonetheless, it was clear when we had reached the bottom, for we emerged from the treeline and the fog alike into a barren patch about fifty yards in diameter.

Starlight shone down brilliantly, with the Blue Star seeming to be almost directly above us and illuminating the area like a beacon, for the mist clung to the treeline as it it was some exhalation of the foliage itself or if it--as we should have--feared to advance further. The ground was rocky and generally flat, though it was broken at haphazard intervals by upthrusting fingers of rock, great spikes that seemed to have plunged up from beneath at crazy angles. In several places these rock ridges formed a natural wall for the clearing, and I realized that we were, in essence, in a cave that simply neglected to have a roof. The approach we'd taken was the only efficient way to enter the area.

"Althena's eyes," whispered Hornigold in awe.

"Glory be!" another gasped.

Patch went so far as to clap Teach on the back.

"Well, yer may be the diseased spew of a bottom-feeder what didn't know its father, old man, but at least ya told us true about _this_! Ahrrr, it'd be worth riskin' me life ter find it."

As might have been expected, the freebooters were not moved to such expressions of awestruck elation by natural wonders (not that the rocky clearing was even all that wondrous). The treasures that lay strewn about as if so much debris were beyond the dreams of avarice. Silver coins overflowed from chests, split the seams of bags, and lay scattered in heaps or seeming to flow like rivers along channels in the rock. Gold and gems were well-represented in jewelry, in plates and tableware, and in works of art. Certain items had an almost barbaric magnificence to them, such as a pair of goblets hewn apparently out of a single gigantic gem each, one ruby and one emerald. There were chains and beads, books with jewel-encrusted ivory covers, and weapons so ornamented with precious stones and metal that they must have been for ritual or purely ornamental use. That the _Cape Matapan_ treasure was part, even most of it was easily verified by certain objects that bore the unmistakable stamp of Prairie Tribe work, including gold-leaf death masks that had surely come from rifled graves. Yet there was more, too, wealth not just from that one fabulous haul but from the many additional trips Bloodheart had made to the island.

It was an incredible sight, but I wasn't particularly moved by it. Perhaps because, unlike the pirates, I had grown up surrounded by the trappings of wealth, simple piles of money did not enthrall me.

"Har," Mel said, "this be the result o' all Van Dierken's pirating over the years."

"And look what it got him," I responded.

"Aye, that. A hoard he can't spend, and himself trapped with it for all time, a damned soul not even knowing Althena's peace after death and only a skeleton crew o' his victims for company." Mel's face was as grim as his words; he, at least, had not been distracted from our purpose by the sight of all the treasure.

A moment later, laughter sprang up from all around us, as if mocking the sentiments Mel and I had expressed. With a great rattling and chiming of coins, a dozen or so skeletons thrust themselves upwards from the treasure heaps. It was they that laughed; though without lungs or throat to give voice nonetheless a cackling screech burst from their jabbering teeth. Then another laugh rang out from the air above us, just as it had on the beach.

"Only the crew for company?" Van Dierken cried, his words beginning even before his figure took shape to speak. "Nothing could be further from the truth!"

He came into view perched on one of the rock spires; his type of petty tyrant would always seek to look down on others.

"Do you think I'm here now from the blackness of my heart alone?" He slashed through the air with his sword to punctuate his remark. "I've always had an eye for the main chance and I took it!"

"Spare us the soliloquies," snapped Jack, surprising pretty much everyone with his vocabulary.

"Why, I had no intention of _talking_ you to death. Did you think a man like me had much use for gab? No, I think a demonstration would be more in order."

With that, he jumped off the rock and landed just to our right. His boots scattered coins when he hit, so he had at least some physical reality. He waved his hand, and the skeletons rushed us together with Van Dierken.

There was a difference between this battle and the one a few hours past, and not just that this time I had a weapon. That time there had been blood and death, the horror of the living dead, but this encounter didn't have that same sense. Even with the uncertain footing, with slippery, shifting piles of treasure and the uneven rock surface beneath, Mel and the crew met the skeleton charge without apparent difficulty, fending off attacks and striking back with brutal efficiency, taking out one-third of the enemy almost at once. Was it that we were past horror now, driven past fear by the desire to live? Or only a heartless evolution at place, that the pirates who were weak victims for the skeletons had been killed on the beach, leaving only those capable of standing their ground for _this_ fight?

I myself was next to useless; I swung my cutlass in two-handed strokes like I was chopping with an axe, but all I accomplished was to strike chips off bone at best. Often, I didn't even succeed in hitting my target, but swung wildly through the air as a skeleton moved. One particularly wild chop, I realized with horror, left me wide open to a counterattack, but the skeleton just stood there, jabbering laughter at me. It made no sense--why didn't it attack?

A hint of an explanation came a moment later when a pirate lunged at the creature, crushing its skull with a massive overhand swing. Before Lowe could even free his cutlass from bone, Van Dierken himself entered the fray. A ghostly hand seized the man's hair, and began to drag the pirate back towards the crag.

"Grimzol!" Van Dierken cried out. "Black Wind of the Prairie! Plaguebringer! Accept my offering!"

He whirled his sword around and slashed it across Lowe's throat. I gasped in horror, not at the death (there had been so much of that already that, it seemed, I was becoming numb to it) but at what followed. The blood that gushed from the wound seemed to catch flame, swirling through the air in a sickly crimson flow, unerringly seeking out one item among the heaped and piled treasure: a squat idol about three feet tall.

It was obviously an idol rather than simply a statue, even without the rite of sacrifice making it plain. The thick body, stubby legs, and masklike face, sculpted of bronze and ornamented with inlaid gold, held a power to it, a force that screamed out, "worshippers carved this." It had been crafted in awe, or perhaps more accurately fear.

The idol seemed to drink in the scarlet fire, absorbing the flow, and a red light kindled in its staring eyes. There was an unearthly howl, and the rocky clearing was suddenly ringed with walls of ghostly fire ten feet high.

Van Dierken dropped Lowe's corpse with a callous flick of his wrist.

"Now, who wants to be next?" he invited, and dove at us.

The clash of steel rang out again as Ace parried the ghost's sword, a second pirate lashed out at the ghost's side, and Mel chopped down with his great axe. The skeletons were down by now, but the unholy flames had us trapped more effectively than a mob of the animated dead could. _They_ had only been to delay us, I now realized, until the first sacrifice could be made.

Yes, _first_. It was all too obvious now, why Bloodheart had left us alive on the beach, why he'd made Teach bring us here. We were fodder to him, lives to spend.

"So, this be what becomes o' ya at last," sneered Mel even as Van Dierken shrugged off blows that would have felled giant monsters. "The great Bloodheart Van Dierken, scourge o' the Meribian, nothing more than the undead lackey o' some demon idol."

"Lackey?" The ghost beat down Ace's guard and slashed at Mel's off side, but Jack got his sword up in the way. The ghost was tireless, and it was all the pirates could do to hold him in one place. "When you and yours have been offered up to Grimzol, I'll take your ship as my own and the crew you left on board will become mine! At last I'll be off this forsaken rock and be able to spread death and terror again!"

"We really _are_ stuck in a bad Lytonian opera, Miss de Alkirk," Ace said.

Van Dierken apparently didn't have a sense of humor; an orb of that sickly greenish-white flame formed in his hand and he hurled it at Ace. The orb burst against his chest and knocked him off his feet. An instant later the ghost struck the sword from Jack's hand, then kicked away Condent from his left side. He drove a lunge at Jack's breast, but Patch hit him with a diving tackle that drew a grunt of pain from the dead man and left Patch writhing on the ground, clutching his shoulder. Van Dierken stabbed down at Patch with a snarl of rage, but Mel lunged with the long shaft of his axe outstretched and deflected the thrust. Roaring, Van Dierken stepped in and slashed Mel across the chest (drawing a squeak of fear from me) and only a concerted effort by Anne and Hornigold drove him back.

_Althena's tears, this is useless!_ I thought ruefully. The cutlass I held was twice-over worthless, both for the weapon itself and for the wielder. We couldn't run, we couldn't hide, and there was no way we could hold off the ghost captain's unholy speed and magic until dawn.

Jack got creative; he yanked a throwing knife from his sash and hurled it at the idol. It didn't even scratch the bronze, clanging off the side of its ugly face. Anne found herself brutally disarmed; she staggered away from the fight clutching a half-severed wrist from which blood pumped freely.

This adventure wasn't fun any more.

Then it was about to get a lot less fun, as Van Dierken blasted down Hornigold with another fiery orb like the one he'd used on Ace, and then he was coming after _me_! Two unearthly-quick steps covered the ground between us; he slapped aside my pathetic guard with the palm of his hand and slashed at my throat.

The blade never got there. Mel had seized Van Dierken from behind in a sort of wrestling hold, hooking both his arms under the ghost's and yanking them back. Mel's screams bellowed out, echoing through the clearing as he paid the price for saving me yet again, his arms and body wreathed in flame. Van Dierken's face was a study in baffled malice as he tried to free himself, but he could not. In terms of pure physical power, Mel was his master, and whatever laws of black magic governed his unholy existence made the grip of a person's own body effective at holding, even hurting him.

_But oh, Althena, the price!_

What could I do? No matter his strength of will, Mel couldn't hold on more than a few seconds longer, and there was nothing I could do. I didn't even have the strength to save him in return; none of us did, really. And our living flesh would burn just as--

_Wait!_

"Jack!" I screamed. "Use your hook! Now, while Mel has him!"

Praise Althena, the bearded pirate got it at once, or else he just chose to do what I said without asking questions. He slashed his hook down across Van Dierken's exposed chest, then up again and swept it backhanded across the dead man's throat.

Now it was Van Dierken's turn to scream, even as the pain grew too much for Mel and he lost his grip. The cuts Jack had inflicted were great rents in Van Dierken's body from which death-pale fire spewed grotesquely like blood. Bloodheart howled, staggering uncontrollably, actually seeming to shrink in on himself until he suddenly exploded in a blinding flash that left us all blinking and seeing spots. I was at Mel's side even before my vision cleared.

"Mel! Mel, please!" His face, his arms, and his chest were a charred ruin; it seemed a miracle that he was somehow still alive. "Someone, do something!" I screamed.

"Afraid...ta disappoint...ya..." he forced out through broken lips, "but...there ain't...nothing...ta...do." The last word wasn't even truly spoken; it was more of a sigh as if it had been exhaled with the rattling breath.

_**"That is not necessarily so."**_

The sepulchral voice echoed from all around us, as if it was the howling of the wind.

_**"Give yourself to me and I shall relieve your suffering."**_

"The idol!" Ace exclaimed, pointing. He was back on his feet, shaken but alive. We'd destroyed Van Dierken, but not Grimzol.

_**"Join with me. You have no love for Althena's law. You are worthy. Replace the weak vessel you overcame."**_

Then it wasn't using words at all, but visions, images that poured through our minds. The lives of the injured restored. All the wealth strewn around us and more besides. I saw Jack taking bloody vengeance on the Meribians who'd used and abandoned him; Patch settling matters with the brother who'd run off with his wife; Condent having the captain who'd lashed his back bloody, inspiring him to piracy, at his mercy at last; Anne blessed with years of youth; Ace with a captaincy of his own, his words heard and respected instead of being always a jest...

Amelie de Alkirk with power, real power to do something, instead of being a helpless ornament, an object to be prized by one group or another...

Hell Mel, a legend to echo down through the centuries as the plague-winds swept across the sea in his wake, kings and princes forced to heed his words...

_Is that what drives Mel?_ I thought suddenly as I felt Grimzol's promise to him.

"'Hell' Mel only...be a...nickname," Mel gasped out. I couldn't believe he was capable of speaking, but it seemed that Grimzol's visions, reaching directly into his mind, had been able to rouse him. "And ya can't give me anything I want."

I gasped in disbelief--and I wasn't the only one, either--when Mel actually got to his knees. First one hand, then the other wrapped around the haft of the huge axe.

"Ya hafta _earn_ it!"

With that shout, he hurled the axe. It spun end-over-end, driven by more than the force of his muscles but by the strength of his spirit. It seemed to be spinning faster and faster as it flew--and perhaps it was, for it hewed through whatever protections had previously shielded the idol like they weren't even there. The blade struck the sculpted mask dead-on, shattering the idol Grimzol. For the second time in only a few minutes, an explosion of white light filled the air as the dying demon-god released the stolen life-force that had been fed into it. The energies washed over us and into us, so that when the storm of white light passed and we picked ourselves up off the ground, we were left staring at one another hale and hearty. Not a trace of the horrible char-blackened burns remained on Mel's body, a fact I could fully appreciate since the wavefront of released life could do nothing for his ruined _shirt_.

I took a second, very careful look--there was quite a lot of rippling muscle to be seen and it took a while to make sure all of it was intact. Anne noticed the direction of my gaze and gave me a "just us girls" wink. I had the decency to blush.

"That," Ace summed up, "was fairly impressive, Captain. But really, the timing was more than just a bit melodramatic."

Jack cuffed him on the back of the head.

~X X X~

_A/N: For those who don't know, Grimzol is the "Inca God" final boss from the cave near Pao in the original _Lunar: Silver Star_ for the Sega CD. In subsequent versions, that whole sequence of events was changed and Grimzol was written out of the game. This story explains why Grimzol wasn't around in the _Silver Star Story_ continuity—it was brought away from the Prairie on the _Cape Matapan_ and destroyed by Mel before Alex's adventure even got a chance to start!_


	14. Chapter XIII

For a long time we were all too happy just to be alive to say much of anything else, but in time that awed and stunned reaction began to ebb in favor of the kind of post-battle practicality I'd already seen from the pirates on Blue Dragon Key. They would mourn their dead, but life went on.

It was Jack who first thought to look for Teach, who'd made himself least-in-sight when the fighting started. We eventually found him dead, half-crumpled behind a massive iron-bound chest half-full of miscellaneous plunder. His face held a twisted, almost exultant look, and there were no wounds on the body.

"Likely 'is black heart gave out at th' thought o' all this booty," offered Condent, "'specially if he was watchin' as Jack an th' Cap'n killed Van Dierken."

"Or he decided to take Grimzol up on its offer and found his position less favorable when Mel split the thing's head open," said Jack.

"That's our Jack, always seein' th' good side o' people," answered Patch, slapping him on the back.

"I really don't think that was it, Jack. We--I, at least--felt all of Grimzol's offers to us in my mind, and Teach wasn't among them. I believe he was dead by then."

Mel nodded.

"Har, Miss de Alkirk, I think that's so."

"Amelie," I corrected him. "I believe the standards of etiquette provide that after destroying one's first demon-god those involved may continue therefrom on a first-name basis."

"Ahrrr, those fancy folk 'ave a rule fer everythin', ain't they?"

"She was joking, Patch," Ace told him.

"Since we're alive and Van Dierken is not," I continued, "I prefer to believe that Mr. Teach died happily with the relief that his soul was no longer bound to his dead captain's will."

"Maybe ya've got the right o' it," agreed Mel. "And since, as ya say, we're alike and none o' their side is, we can afford to be forgiving. I'd rather hoist a glass to Scrope and Lowe and Hornigold and the others with a clean heart."

"How am I supposed to stay bitter and resentful around you people?" Jack complained.

"Speaking of hoisting a glass," Ace noted, "oughtn't we be checking to see if we need to add Morgan to that list?"

~X X X~

"You couldn't have left me a _note_?"

As it turned out, he was perfectly fine, not to mention worried and crabby. I would have been, too, if I'd woken up on a beach, deserted but for the dead and the remains of the living dead and my last memories having been of a battle with a ghost's hand around my throat.

"Pardon our rudeness, as we were a bit busy trying to save yer neck at the time."

Mind you, just because we understood didn't mean that we were going to let him give us grief over it.

Explanations were the order of the day, and once the story was told, apparently _more_ explanations were necessary. Either that, or Morgan was just a stickler for detail.

"Let me get this straight. Even though swords and crossbows and axes couldn't do anything to scratch Van Dierken, Jack's hook killed him? Why?"

Jack shrugged.

"Beats me. Ask Amelie; it was her idea."

"_Amelie's_ idea?"

"Well, I can't fight and I can't do magic," I said, a bit self-consciously, "but I can still _think_. Weapons couldn't hurt Van Dierken, but bare hands could. I thought that since Jack's hook is virtually a part of his body, it might be included, but since it was artificial, he could touch Van Dierken with it without getting hurt."

"In a manner of speaking," Jack said wryly. He held up his right arm, displaying the twisted stub that was all that was left of the hook. At least Van Dierken's magic had been consistent; the hook had been treated as an extension of Jack's body in all ways.

"I don't get'cher, Jack Hook," Patch declared. "We get ourselves marooned on an island o' the dead, with ghosts an' skeletons an' all th' devils as ever crawled out o' an old sea story, an' yer finds yerself a sense o' humor."

Strangely, Jack took Patch's joke seriously. He thought it over, then grinned.

"I guess I realized that, seeing what became of Teach and Van Dierken, there were things in my own life worth laughing about after all."

"Oh, great. Now I have competition for my job," Ace said in mock consternation.

"Which topic, Ace, brings me to me next point," Mel said when the laughter died down, "seeing as how we're talking o' changing positions and such."

"Oh? Who's changing positions?"

"Amelie. She'll be changing from hostage ta guest, as of immediately." The good humor had vanished from his voice in an instant, as if he was expecting a fight. Maybe he was; given what I'd learned of pirate democracy, Mel didn't have the power to just give away valuable goods that were the prize of an entire crew. Everything about his voice, his posture, though, said he was going to do just that, and Althena help anyone who got in his way.

"Mel..." I said softly, touched beyond words. But there was no way I was going to let this degenerate into a brawl. One thing about boys, be they highborn or commoners, is that if you back them into a corner they'll as often as not do something stupid just to save face, out of pride.

(You might want to remember that, Jessica, for when you have a young man of your own.)

I found a smile somewhere and said airily, "Mel, really, there's no need to get all huffy and puffy about it." _Keep it light, Amelie!_ "We've just defeated horrible monsters and found a legendary treasure. There's no reason to start picking fights over the obvious."

I sent a beseeching glance at Ace, when I hoped had both the wit to pick up on the cue and the temperament to go along with it.

Thankfully, he did.

"Quite," he decided. "Isn't it written in the ship's articles, 'any hostage who shall, by exercise of her wit, save half of the crew from becoming blood sacrifices and the other half from becoming soulless undead slaves, shall at once be set free at the convenient port of her choosing?' I thought I remembered something to that effect."

"Ahr, as do I," agreed Patch. "'Course, it helps as me share o' the ransom'd be pocket change as compared ter the treasures we found."

"Deuced inconvenient to try to spend that wealth while fending off House de Alkirk rescue parties," was Morgan's contribution.

"You three are idiots," Jack stated flatly, and paused just long enough to worry me before continuing. "Just come out and say that we're not the kind of backstabbing scum who'd do Amelie a bad turn after the night we've survived and leave it at that. We have treasure to load, and that's a job that'll take days."

"Days?" Morgan asked. "There's really _that_ much of it?"

"There's also the point that we'll have to cart it out here, then take it out ta the _Fancy_ by boat, but aye, there's more here than the ship will hold," Mel told him. "We'll not be taking the grave-goods stolen from the Prairie Tribe, o' course, but there's more than enough else ta make our fortunes."

"And it was just laying around, out in the open?"

"Remember them pits ya found? I think Van Dierken had his loot dug up from where he'd hidden it, after he died."

"Because there wasn't any point in hiding it?" Ace wondered. "Or just because he wanted to revel in it?"

"Maybe to hide from the fact that he'd become a damned horror who'd never get the chance to spend any of it even if he did get off this island?"

"Jack Hook, you are officially a cynic."

"I think you were right the first time, Ace," I said. "The money didn't matter to him, so he deliberately had it strewn here and there. But Jack, I don't think he had any regrets. If the things Teach and everyone else said about him are true, the money wasn't the point. Van Dierken was a pirate because he wanted to hurt people and take what they had. It wasn't for money or for freedom from rules or even for revenge. It was just cruelty and hate."

No one answered me for a second, only the waves splashing against the rocks out past the lagoon.

"I propose," Morgan finally said, "that we've wasted enough of our lives on that piece of shark bait to stand here debating the whys and wherefores of his life. Since the dead of Dead Man's Isle are apparently now staying that way, I for one say we should get some sleep. We'll be doing a lot of heavy lifting tomorrow."

"_Aye_!" was the enthusiastic chorus.

~X X X~

It took the better part of three days for the pirate crew to load the _Fancy_'s hold (and pretty much everywhere else on board) full of treasure from Van Dierken's haul. It was hard work; goods had to be packed up in the caldera, carried over land to the beach, rowed out to the sloop, hoisted on board, and stowed. I was impressed that there were no accidents along the way; it would have been all too easy for the heavily-laden longboat to be swept off-course by the current and smashed onto the reef. I was even more impressed by the near-total lack of complaining; it had been my experience that a group of men doing hard physical labor will usually let anyone within earshot hear all about it regardless of how well-paid they were for the job, usually with a very colorful choice of vocabulary.

All told, we managed to get perhaps half of what was there stowed away, which was better than I'd expected. The _Cape Matapan_ treasure had reportedly filled a full-sized merchantman's hold to bursting, and on top of that there had been Van Dierken's loot from years of sea-roving.

"Do you think some of it is still buried?" I asked Mel. "Or that some of the _Cape Matapan_ treasure actually went down on the _Balthasar_?"

He gave a great, booming laugh that echoed across the deck.

"What, lass, do ya be getting a touch o' the gold fever as well?"

I made a face.

"If you believe Jack, all we aristocrats are born with it."

He looked almost stricken by my snappy rejoinder, which in turn cut me to the quick. Big, bad warrior and pirate captain he might be, but when his feelings were hurt he looked just like a sad puppy--even his ears drooped. I supposed it was lucky I seemed to be the only one who could bring on that look, or else he probably wouldn't have lasted too long as a pirate. I might have been new to the buccaneering lifestyle, but I didn't think "Awww, how cute!" was the reaction pirates wanted their leaders to inspire.

"I'm sorry," we both blurted at once, then stammered out a few, "Oh, no, it was my fault" type of things, and ended up looking aside sheepishly at the farcical turn things had taken.

"Anyways, ta answer yer question," Mel finally took about the only way out of the conversational hole we'd dug, "it ain't too much o' a surprise, concerning the treasure."

"Why is that?"

"The thing about pirates, lass, is that we tends ta spend what we make, on drink and food and--" Mel stopped suddenly, his ears blushing red.

"Carousing?" I suggested, to get him past that part.

"Aye, ta say nothing o' gambling. Bloodheart may have kept the dragon's share fer himself, but that still leaves quite a bit fer his crew ta fritter away. Besides that, ya can't stow most trade-goods fer too long, on account o' they tends ta be perishable, so's ta have ta sell them fer coin or something lasting at any rate. Seeing as how the market ain't so large and the authorities can be all kinds o' interested, ya don't get so good a price fer stolen goods. The _Cape Matapan_ treasure were a special case, not only on account o' its size, but because o' Van Dierken being hunted fer it so's he and his crew had no time ta spend any, and beyond that because it were all in treasure ta begin with, not kegs o' brandy or bolts o' cloth or suchlike."

"I see." I was impressed by Mel's easy command of the financial complexities and his ability to apply them to this particular case. Like any good trader, he knew the market in which he dealt.

I shouldn't have been surprised. To be a successful pirate took more than looting and pillaging. Skill in battle; leadership and charisma outside of combat; attention to the logistics of planning a voyage and preparing the supplies; a keen knowledge of sailing and tactical combat; and the public-relations skill to build a reputation for brutality and fair dealing simultaneously were all involved. How to dispose of the proceeds for maximum profit was only the icing on the cake.

At the end of that mental recital of Mel's sterling professional qualities, I gave a little sigh.

"Eh, lass, be something wrong?"

I shook my head.

"No, nothing. I was just thinking."

I did a lot more thinking during the first few days of our trip back to Blue Dragon Key. I had some hard questions to ask myself and hiding from them would do no one any good, particularly myself. It is very difficult to get one's head and heart to work together, and even more difficult to disentangle one emotion from another. I was in the middle of more excitement and adventure than I'd had in my entire lifetime combined, and figuring out just what was due to those thrills and what wasn't...

One can understand, then, that by the fourth day out from Dead Man's Isle I still wasn't sure of my answers. I specify the fourth day because it was on that day the usual shipboard routine was broken by a shout from the crow's nest.

"Ship ahoy! Bearing at two o' clock!"

Mel whipped out a telescope and peered through it, scanning the horizon. After a moment he let out a few choice oaths that turned _my_ ears red.

"Hard ta port! Steer due north and pray she ain't seen us!"

"What is she? Meribian Navy? House de Alkirk?" Morgan asked.

"I can't be certain, but she belongs ta _someone_ with money ta burn. There be a funnel amidships, between the main and mizzen masts."

"A funnel?" Morgan was confused.

"A _steamship_?" So was I, but for different reasons. "She can't be one of our family's; Father doesn't trust them. He says putting fire elementals on board a wooden ship is putting Althena's mercy to the test."

The _Fancy_ began to turn in response to the spinning helm and the work of the hands at the sails. Even I could see, though, that with a hold full of treasure she was no longer the agile sailor she had been on the trip out.

"What's a steamship?" Morgan wanted to know.

"She's something thought up by thrice-cursed magicians as won't leave well enough alone!" snapped Mel.

Pleased to know something that at least some of the others didn't for once, I explained more fully. "It's an engine similar to the kind used on airships. A magician conjures and binds a fire elemental, which is used to boil water into steam. The pressure of the steam is used to turn a shaft which ends in a propeller under the water to push a ship forward."

"How good are they?"

"I'm not sure. What I know about them is because Jered Kantrell was bragging about them at a ball this past season. House Kantrell is financing research into steam power. Father says that they're very expensive both because magicians skilled enough to perform the spells do not work cheaply, and because metalwork of the quality needed for the engine is not common either. If the steam pressure causes the engine to crack, not only is there the possibility of a dangerous steam explosion, but the elemental is freed as well."

Morgan shuddered.

"I can see why your father would avoid that."

"Har, but that ship can sail dead inta the wind or in a calm if she be working, or else add steam power ta her speed with the wind."

"Cap'n, she's turnin' ter follow!" called the man aloft.

"I can see that, curse ya!" Mel peered intently through the telescope. "She's getting up steam besides, not that she'll need it as we're sailing like a sea cow. I can almost see her colors..."

Suddenly, Mel let out a blistering stream of oaths that put pretty much the entire crew of hardened sea dogs to the blush.

"Dare we ask?" Ace shouted from amidships.

"Meribian Navy?" asked someone else.

"Worse," Mel said grimly. "She's flying the Moon and Four."

"_Althena's_ flag?" Morgan gaped.

"Aye. Congratulations, lass; it seems yer about ta be rescued by the Dragonmaster himself."


	15. Chapter XIV

"Rescued? But you've already set me free!"

"I'm thinking nobody's as told him that."

"But if they storm the ship--"

"A lot of people will get killed," Morgan said flatly, "either defending our lives in battle or hung for piracy if captured."

"Hung! But you're not kidnapping me! And all this treasure wasn't stolen, it was salvaged! And you deliberately left any Prairie Tribe relics on the island!"

"Yer forgetting the attack on that ship o' yers as started it all," Mel put in. "Not ta mention the assorted warrants and such out on the notorious 'Hell Mel' fer past offenses against the common welfare." He turned away and roared, "Another thirty degrees ta port, Goss! Steer due north and we can ride the wind. I've never met a steamer yet that could sail worth a damn without her engines, and if we can make her run hot we might be able ta shake her when she has ta shut down ta cool."

We were already turning long before the explanation was finished; Mel's crew obeyed orders during battle without asking why.

"She's turning too, Cap'n!" cried the lookout.

"We may have ta jettison some o' the treasure," Mel said with a sigh. "It may give us a fighting chance ta lighten the load. If we don't, she'll catch us." Indeed, the_ Fancy_'s sails were billowing full, but the pursuing ship had gained ground quickly, so that I could start to make out some details with the naked eye.

Mel nodded to himself, as if settling a discussion.

"All hands, prepare ta--what in Althena's name?"

Morgan and I were standing in identical, slack-jawed, gaping poses, as I suspected was anyone who had been looking astern at the time. The entire pursuing ship seemed to be swallowed by the translucent image of a gigantic white dragon at least three times the height of her masts. I still swear that I could see the wrinkles on the leathery hide of its face and the strands of fur waving in the wind. Then, the dragon spread its wings majestically, opened its jaws, and _roared._

The sound seemed to race across the water like a tangible force; I could see the air ripple in its wake and the expanding circle in the sea. It echoed in our ears, noble and defiant, as it washed over us, and in its wake the wind died.

"Literally," Ace noted belatedly.

We looked at one another in desperation. The Dragonmaster had called upon the power of the White Dragon, stilled the wind for miles around his ship, and eliminated any chance of escape. We could hurl every piece of treasure overboard and it wouldn't do a bit of good. A kind of terrified despair seemed to fall over us as we saw the steamship inexorably close the gap.

"Ahrrr. It do be times like this, as it do seem unfortunate ter have chosen a life o' villainy," Patch said grimly.

"Indeed," said Morgan, the laconic tone returning as he watched destiny close in, "it seems that the Goddess has a sense of humor, to bring us to justice just when it looked as if we'd finally hit the one we could retire on."

"Wait a minute," Jack cried. "Let's think this over. They might have the Dragonmaster and, for all I know, half the magicians of Vane on board, but they can't just burn us into the sea or call up the waves to swallow us. It's a rescue mission, and Dragonmasters don't go around sacrificing the damsel in distress just to kill the villains."

"So what?" somebody called out.

"So if they want us, they'll have to come get us in a fair fight! They aren't ghosts that can't be hurt; they're men and women like us. Oh, they might be the high and mighty Althena's Guard, but we're the best damned pirate crew in the Meribian--no, in all Lunar--and I say, if they want to give us their brand of justice, then we'll make them pay for it in blood!"

He thrust his sword into the air, and loud huzzahs burst from nearly every throat on the ship (including, I'm afraid, my own--and I'm still not sure whether to be ashamed or proud of that). The significant exception to that was Mel.

"Enough!" he roared. "That were a fine speech, Jack, and I'm hoping ya remember it ta tell yer grandchildren one day, but we all know how a fight like that'd end. I'll not be having ya throw yer lives away."

"I'm not going back to dance the hempen jig," Jack snapped, "and I don't think anyone else here wants to, either!"

"No more do I, but dead is dead. I don't much favor one way o' getting there over another, not when there's a better way."

"What way?"

Mel scowled fiercely at the one-handed pirate.

"Am I or am I not the captain o' this ship?" he roared.

"You are."

"And is this or is it not a battle we be talking about?"

"It is."

"Then I ain't obliged ta explain meself, am I? Just follow my lead and stand ready if things go wrong." He unslung his great axe and pounded the butt on the deck for emphasis. "D'ya hear me, all o' ya?"

"Aye!" Some shouted it boldly, while a few grumbled, but they all said it. It was a strong sign, as if I needed any more, of how much confidence the crew--even those used to serving under Captain Stede--placed in Mel. Their blood was up, fired for battle, but they'd reined it in on his say-so alone.

"Then ta battle stations, and ready for a fight--but mark me well, the first one o' ya who looses a bolt or hurls a grapnel without my say-so, I'll keelhaul with me own hands!"

As they sprang to, he turned to me.

"Amelie, ya get yerself below, out o' the line o' fire."

"No."

"What!?"

I shook my head.

"No, I won't go below. For one, if I'm not in sight the Dragonmaster might not know I'm here at all and could just sink the ship outright. Then again, if I'm hidden safely away he can just sweep the deck with arrows and lesser spells. I know you don't want to hear it, Mel, but if I'm not out in plain sight in the line of fire your idea won't stand a chance of getting started. You'll have two choices: surrender or die. If he offers a choice."

He gave me the kind of look men get when a woman is completely correct and it's driving them crazy. He hovered on the point of saying something stupid because he didn't like being wrong, then got past it and moved on.

"Amelie, I don't want ya in danger if some hothead on either side goes off half-cocked and touches off a fight."

"I know, but that's no worse than if I'm hiding below and Dragonmaster Dyne turns the _Fancy_ into Nautical Flambe a la Red Dragon."

"How did ya get so good at tactics anyway, lass, when ya've never been in a battle afore now?"

"Clearly, you have never attended a society ball. I can stay?"

"Aye, ya can." Mel clearly hated to do it, but he knew that I was right; having me on deck was the best way to keep not only myself but everyone else safe from immediate risk.

None of which had anything to do with the reason I actually wanted to stay, but they made for much better arguments. Thus I watched along with the rest of them as the steamship drew nearer and nearer, entering into archery range, then finally pulling alongside, as close as the _Black Fortune_ had come to the _Swiftsure_ when the pirates had first kidnapped me.

The Dragonmaster's ship was an impressive sight, I had to admit. Her name gleamed in gold letters from the bow: _Swallow_. That surprised me, as I'd expected something more belligerent or else something that recalled dragons or the Goddess. Twice as long and half again as wide as the _Fancy_ though with equally low freeboard, she screamed elegance. Even the sailors in their bright white shirts and buff trousers seemed fresh-scrubbed, and more ominously there were the marines as well, their breastplates and helms shining. I counted no less than three white-robed priests and a bearded man in green and red who had to be a magician. Considering the source, the mage was probably a full-fledged member of the Magic Guild of Vane.

_Althena, please let Mel's plan work, whatever it is. Don't let this come to a fight!_ I prayed silently. It was a reflex action, and I realized the irony of it a moment later, but I went ahead and finished it anyway. _Don't let my friends die because of me._

They _were_ friends, I realized. People I cared about and wanted to help, and whom I trusted would help me in return. Ace with his ready wit and quick mind; Morgan's dandified airs and core of steel; Anne with the courage and bravado as a woman that I wished I possessed; Patch, who seemed to be every good _and_ bad stereotype of a pirate rolled up into one...

And Mel. Mel, who'd proven a dozen times over to have triple the character, the decency, the moral courage of any of the pampered sprigs of Meribia's merchant nobility who'd bowed over my hand at parties and dances. His physical prowess was impressive, even thrilling (there, I admit it), but it would have meant nothing without the man.

"Ahoy, the _Fancy_!" someone called from the _Swallow_'s deck.

"Ahoy yerself!" Mel roared back. "Step forward, ya rogue, if ya wants ta talk."

I wasn't sure that being so aggressive was the right approach, but boys will be boys. Sure enough, the ranks parted and the unmistakable figure of Dragonmaster Dyne strode to the rail.

The black-and-tan armor and the crimson shield and helmet were unique, of course, but there was more to it than that which marked Dyne for whom he was. He carried about himself an aura of sorts, a tangible energy that I could sense even from several dozen feet away. Mel carried with him something of the same force, but it was different in Dyne, something that proclaimed that he was not just a man wearing the Dragon Armor and wielding its magic, but that he was truly Dragonmaster--that when it was all over, it was the man who defined what he was, not the power. His physical appearance was almost an afterthought: nearly Mel's height but not so massive, his features not particularly handsome--there were too many angles and not enough curves, especially in chin and nose--but with a certain relaxed confidence and even a hint of humor.

This was the man I--all of Lunar, really--had been taught to see as the ultimate hero, Althena's personal champion, the last resort of all that was good and decent. Never in my life had I dreamed he'd end up being my _enemy_.

"So, you're 'Hell Mel.' Your appearance matches your reputation," Dyne said. "I see Miss de Alkirk still seems hale and healthy."

"Of course she be well. Did ya think otherwise?"

"Not really; you're supposed to be a man of your word in these matters. The question is, are you going to give yourselves up peacefully or do we have to do this the hard way?"

"Neither, if I have me way."

Dyne glanced at the magician, who shook his head. I assumed he was checking to see if we had some sneaky magical surprise in wait, which of course we didn't. To bad Dyne hadn't shown up when we were on the island; we could have let _him_ fight Grimzol and Van Dierken while we slipped away.

"Neither?"

Think about it. We've got an important hostage here. Ya can't be sinking us out o' hand. Likewise, I wouldn't suggest an all-out battle, else some stray arrow might go in the wrong place."

I supposed if Mel was going to listen to my arguments, he had might as well use them.

"I wouldn't necessarily count on that, Mel. For example, Eryx, here"--he pointed to the wizard--"could hit that fellow standing next to Miss de Alkirk with a thunderbolt and not even make her hair frizz from static."

Was it a bluff? Who could say, but I felt that I _had_ to do something. With a quick movement I snatched the knife from Morgan's belt and pressed the edge against my own throat.

"Is he _this_ fast, Dyne?" I shouted. "If you so much as raise a hand, I'll--"

"Are ya _daft_, lass?" Mel gasped, even as his big hand closed over mine. He pulled the knife away harmlessly and took it from my grasp. "Althena's tears, but don't ya _ever_ be trying something so bloody stupid again!"

"But I--"

"_No buts_! I'll have none o' that foolishness from ya, d'ya hear me?"

Dyne, meanwhile, had burst into rich, powerful laughter.

"Oh, not 'The Lady and the Pirate'! That's the oldest routine in bad melodrama!"

I blushed scarlet and wished the Dragonmaster at the bottom of the ocean, preferably tied to a heavy weight.

"If yer finished amusing yerself at a lady's expense, then perhaps we can get ta talking business?" Mel growled. "This ain't a farce fer yer benefit."

"It's apparently a farce for _someone's_ benefit," Dyne replied, the grin refusing to leave his face. There were more chuckles and grins--from _both_ ships, now--and I saw red. I'd _meant_ what I'd said, blast it, yet between that and Mel's reaction, Dyne had contrived to turn the whole thing into a joke. A _joke_!

A joke...which had two crews no longer on the point of drawing a weapon as an instantaneous reaction. You couldn't be laughing and wound to the sticking point with tension at the same time. By keeping his comments light, Dyne was reducing the chance someone on either side would do something stupid before he and Mel had finished negotiating. Clever, and not too different what I'd done after Mel had announced that he was freeing me.

I still wished him to Blue Dragon's Deep, of course, but that was a matter of hurt pride.

"This be a matter o' life and death," Mel growled back at him. He was the only one who didn't look even a bit amused, though in his position I wouldn't either. "The life o' my crew and yers, if we gives the orders ta fight it out. I know my crew would die fighting fer their freedom, and yers, I'm sure, would die fer their Goddess. Ya be the bloody Dragonmaster, so's yer side would probably win, but whose blood would run in the scuppers afore it were through?"

"Every one of us has a duty to Althena. As you yourself said, we're willing to accept that risk."

"But are ya willing ta order them ta fight and die if ya don't have ta?"

Dyne looked thoughtful.

"What are you proposing?"

"That instead o' the people under us fighting and dying, we settle it between ourselves, you and me?"

"A duel?" Now the Dragonmaster looked vaguely amused. "And if you lose, will your crew happily surrender themselves to justice?"

Mel snorted.

"O' course not."

"Then I don't see how you and I fighting would settle anything."

"That's cause ya ain't heard me terms yet."

Dyne inclined his head.

"Very well. Try me."

"If ya win, Miss de Alkirk goes back ta her parents with ya, the _Fancy_ and all her contents become the prize o' the law, and ya agree ta put me crew ashore at Blue Dragon Key, free and unhurt, and leave them be from then on."

"And if you win?" He didn't bother with any bluster about Mel having no chance of winning, which was not good. I'd have felt a lot better about Mel's chances against a blowhard.

"Then yer crew gives up the chase, and the _Fancy_ and all o' us get ta sail away, free and clear--but Amelie goes back with yer crew, so's yer rescue be a success either way."

"_This_ is your brilliant plan?" I exploded. "You're going to fight the _Dragonmaster_?"

"It's better than _all_ o' us fighting the Dragonmaster _and_ all his magicians and soldiers, and this way there's no chance of ya getting killed in the crossfire."

"Indeed it is," agreed Dyne. "Very well, Captain Mel. I agree to your terms."

~X X X~

_A/N: Anyone still wondering about the _Swallow_'s name may note that it was the name of the Royal Navy vessel that ran down and killed Bartholomew "Black Bart" Roberts, the most successful pirate of the real-life "Golden Age of Piracy." Actually, a ridiculous number of the characters and ships in this story are taken from real-life pirate history. See how many you can spot!_


	16. Chapter XV

The two crews found themselves in surprising agreement over the apparently mutual insanity of their captains. While Mel and Dyne calmly worked out the specifics of the duel, they fended off any number of shouts, screams, and reasoned arguments, according to the character of the individual complainants.

I waited until Mel was done before offering my contribution.

"Are you insane?" I shrieked. "You treated me as if I'd lost my mind for threatening my own life, and they you turn around and do the exact same thing? This was your brilliant plan?"

"It worked, didn't it? And it's not the same thing at all."

"That's true. I was only _threatening_ my life. You're actually going through with it!"

"It do be a duel, not a suicide, lass."

"Mel, I know that you are a good fighter. I've seen you do things that, at least to me, seem absolutely incredible. You have strength and skill and the willpower to use both to their fullest extent, but Dyne is the _Dragonmaster_. He is a master of combat and magic both, and he's blessed by the Four Dragons. His armor and weapons alone are so powerful that they would make a hopeless case like...like _me_ into a warrior to be feared. You can't be throwing away your life like this!"

"And whose _should_ I throw away, then? Yours? Morgan's? Ace's? Jack's? Whose?"

"I...I..."

He placed both of his big hands on my shoulders.

"Do ya think I _want_ ta die, Amelie? 'Cause I'm sure that I don't. But I'm the captain. These are me people, they trust me, and it was me decisions that led to this. Taking ya hostage, for one thing, so that the Dragonmaster'd have a reason ta be after us. Haring off after treasure afore finishing the ransom fer another, so's we'd be so loaded down as ta be unable ta run away."

"Mel, you can't seriously blame yourself for that. The crew _voted_ to go after the treasure."

"It were me plan. That don't be the point, though. Look, if I believed we'd a chance ta win by pulling steel and going at it like Jack wanted I'd have done it, but we don't and ya know it, too. This way, at least they don't have ta go down with me, and yer safe one way or the other. That's what being a pirate captain is. Ya got ta do yer best fer yer crew, on account o' yer only in the job 'cause they trust ya."

"This would be an excellent time to step down and give Morgan the job," I said wistfully.

"Ye'd rather him be killed, instead? Back on that island ya seemed pretty worried about him."

I blinked, surprised that Mel would say something like that.

"I'd have been worried about _anyone_ who'd been cursed like he was--but Dyne had the right of it. If it was my choice between your life or his, I wouldn't have to think hard enough to justify calling it a choice at all."

Before he could react to that statement, I gave him a very clear (if unladylike) demonstration of my point by reaching up, grabbing a fistful of bushy side-whiskers in each hand, and hauling Mel's mouth down to mine for a hard, deep kiss. It came as such a shock to him that it took at least five seconds for him to start kissing me back, but once he started he did a very creditable job. His arms were close around me by the time our lips parted.

"I ain't got a right ta be saying this right before I step into a duel," he began haltingly, but I cut him off. This was no time for him to work his way through masculine pride or honor or worry about our respective social status or whatever it was that made him pause.

"I love you, Mel," I said simply. "I don't want to lose you."

"I love ya too, Amelie," he began, then tried his best to spoil it by saying, "We both know ya deserve better, though. Hell, I'm not only not a noble, I be a wanted criminal in most o' the Meribian Sea ports. Ya ain't meant fer that kind o' life and ya knows it."

I'd have kicked him if he wasn't going to be fighting a duel soon.

"That's just stupid, Mel. It's true that I'm not _trained_ for life on a pirate ship, but I could be with enough practice. I might never be a great sailor or fighter, but I could at least become adequate. As for where I'm _meant_ to be, that's with the man I love. Or do you truly believe I care more for pretty dresses, feather mattresses, gourmet cooking, and society parties than I do for you?"

"O' course not!"

"Then quit trying to be noble and think of what would make me happy."

This time, _he_ kissed _me_.

~X X X~

The duel took place on board the _Swallow_. Ostensibly, this was because the larger deck afforded a better space to fight. In reality, I suspected Dyne's side felt that having a pirate crew surrounding the duelists presented too much temptation for backstabbing and treachery. Mel might be trustworthy in their eyes, but extending that trust to the entire crew was a bit much to ask. Truthfully, they were probably right. Mel would run the same risk, that some fanatical member of Althena's Guard might try something if it looked like he was about to win, but he was willing to take the chance. I'd have argued the point, but Mel was gaining a benefit in return: Dyne would be less likely to try spectacular and destructive magic on his own deck.

He'd chosen to go into battle armed with his two hand-axes instead of the great axe, on account of Dyne's sword-and-shield fighting style. I supposed I could see the point--what if Dyne blocked an attack and struck back with his sword?--but it worried me that Mel wouldn't have access to the incredible power that he'd used against Grimzol. I wished I knew more about fighting so I could at least be aware if I was supposed to worry or not; I didn't seem to have much trouble understanding combat on a tactical level, but the man-to-man intricacies of it were beyond me.

We crowded the rail of the _Fancy_, looking across the narrow gap to where the two men squared off. The _Swallow_'s crew and guards were as eager to watch as we; their presence made for front and back lines of the dueling ground from the steam funnel nearly to the foremast.

"Does he even stand a chance?" I asked plaintively. Ace was next to me at the rail and he answered, without any trace of his usual humor.

"I have no idea, Amelie. We all know the stories about the Dragonmaster, Althena's Sword, and the Dragon Armor, but who knows the reality?"

"That's the part that worries me the most," I admitted. "I'd back Mel in a fight against anyone, Dragonmaster or not, if it was just man-to-man, but that's--"

"Althena's eyes! What's he doing?" someone interrupted me, but the interruption was directly to the point. Dyne had come out of his cabin and strode into the cleared area _without_ the Dragon regalia. His shield and breastplate were highly polished steel with Althena's crest, clearly borrowed from one of the guardsmen, and while his sword looked impressive enough to me it lacked the distinctive dragon hilt of Althena's Sword..

I laughed joyously.

"Don't you see? Dyne is going to fight _fairly_!"

"Either he's crazy," Ace decided, "or he really is that honorable."

"Same thing," said Jack.

The two men stepped towards one another, raised their weapons in a kind of salute, and then with no words between them, the battle was joined.

It was Mel who struck first; his style of battle was to attack his opponent relentlessly, not to wait and counter. Dyne met the berserker rush, blocking the first axe-strike with his shield and parrying the second with his sword. His parry had been to the haft, not the heavy blade, and with a flick of his wrist he sent the sword skimming down the shaft towards Mel's hand. In the nick of time Mel saw the threat and pulled his weapon away, then tried to hook the lower edge of his axe-blade down across Dyne's sword in a countering disarm. Dyne was too quick for that and broke off his own stroke, only to find Mel battering at his shield again. Another quick clash ensued, and both men stepped back with almost identical little smirks on their faces.

"Not bad, fer someone who spends as much time praying as fighting."

"Not bad yourself, for someone used to fighting with his black reputation and blacker scowl instead of weapons."

_Goddess, they're enjoying this!_ I thought in amazement. _Men!_

Steel rang against steel as Mel attacked again with a furious combination of strikes. There was so much more to it than brutal hacking; in one moment he seemed to be battering his way through Dyne's guard by simply beating down his shield, and in the next he was extending the Dragonmaster's defensive stance by going high, then low, varying left and right to attack the unique weaknesses of shield and sword. His style was so different from the kind of fencing Meribian nobles learned, letting attack blend into attack instead of the ebb and flow of parry and riposte. Mel didn't react to his opponent's actions; he pressed the offensive and by never ceding the initiative eventually forced his foe to make a mistake, if they didn't first succumb physically to Mel's amazing quickness and power.

Dyne, though, was no ordinary opponent. While at times Mel would drive him across the deck, just as often Dyne would be able to drive back with a ferocious defense that jarred Mel out of his attack sequence and opened the door for a counterattack. With entirely too common frequency for my health, the Dragonmaster's sword lashed out at what looked like an unprotected portion of Mel's body, only to have the attack blocked or dodged at the last second.

I lost count of the number of times my heart froze in terror when Dyne seized a momentary advantage, and I am sure my almost constant gasps of shock and sighs of relief irritated the pirate crew who crowded the rail around me. There are women, I know, who exult in watching their men fight, and I admit that more than once it had been exhilarating to see Mel in action, but this was different. Although the cause of the duel was to protect me and the pirates, that had been accomplished by the agreement to fight it. The only thing at stake now was Mel's own life.

For over an hour the two of them struggled without a victor; it was torture to watch it go on. At the time I had no idea how astounding that was. Most duels of whatever sort end in only a few minutes, since a successful attack, mistake, or even a stroke of fortune can result in a serious wound that, even if not immediately decisive, shifts the balance enough to resolve things. Likewise, sporting events include pauses for rest or substitution, and although real battles can last all day they are not spent fighting that entire time but rather each soldier faces a series of engagements broken up by tactical movements. For two people to fight as long as Mel and Dyne did, with no pauses and neither gaining the upper hand, was almost beyond belief.

The sun was beginning to hang low in the sky as the afternoon wore on, and still neither man appeared to be gaining an advantage. They were clearly tiring; sweat ran down their faces and stained their clothing, while Mel's whirlwind axe-strikes and Dyne's sword blows seem to come a hair less quickly, as if they had to actively, deliberately summon up the force to launch each attack instead of doing so reflexively.

"They're going to write songs about this one," Ace marveled as Dyne spun away from a particularly furious assault only to come up against the mainmast. Mel swung for the Dragonmaster's head, but Dyne ducked just in time; splinters flew and Dyne bashed Mel in the chest with his shield to open up space, getting himself out of his cramped position. "I've never seen two heroes so evenly matched."

"Heroes, Ace?" Jack said dryly.

"Well, we're talking about the Captain, not you," Ace noted. "And he did kill that Grimzol thing on the island. That would have been heroic even if he hadn't been burnt to a crisp at the time."

I shuddered, remembering how badly Mel had been hurt by the ghost's fire.

"He's a hero regardless of what he does," I said. "He has honor tempered by kindness and compassion, and he has the courage and the steadfast will to act on those beliefs even when inconvenient or difficult."

Ace looked at me measuringly.

"You really do love him, don't you?"

"How could I not?"

My breath caught as Dyne came in with a complicated sequence of strokes: over and under, thrusts and slashes. I'd seen it before, and it never quite ended the same way, so I assumed that the point was to set up a series of predictable responses and then come with a surprise attack. This time, Mel dodged a backhand cut and drove Dyne back with two quick axe-strokes that badly crumpled the lip of the Dragonmaster's shield.

"You could see him as the dirty, uneducated, uncouth leader of a gang of low-class criminals," Jack said bluntly. "Love isn't just about a person's good qualities; you have to be able to see past the bad ones."

He had something of a point, as I supposed Mel wouldn't be to the taste of some--all right, most--of the girls in Meribian society, but that wasn't relevant. His superficial qualities didn't hide the fact that at his heart Mel was as heroic a man as Dragonmaster Dyne.

That thought was what did it. The idea sprang almost full-blown into my head, called up by some intuitive depths I didn't even know I had. If Mel was as much a hero in his heart as Dyne, then didn't it follow that Dyne was as much a hero as Mel? Something was not making sense.

_Why was the Dragonmaster here at all?_

That was not to say that fighting pirates and rescuing damsels in apparent distress wasn't heroic work, but it didn't ring true. Dyne's arrival was one step short of Divine Intervention, which wasn't Althena's usual way of doing things. How I'd wished then that I'd paid more attention to religious literature, so I'd know if I was in any way right...but I couldn't stand by without getting an answer.

"What are you _doing_?" Ace grabbed my arm as I started to step up onto the rail.

"I need to get over to the _Swallow_. I have to talk to Dyne!"

"Isn't it a little late for that?"

"Mel isn't dead, is he? Then it's not too late!"

"All right, but seriously, Amelie, if you tried jumping across, you'd end up in the water."

He had a point.

"Hand-over-hand on a grappling rope is probably out of the question, too," he pondered.

"Why not just run a plank over?"

"Pirates don't really make people walk the plank, Amelie. That was a myth dreamed up by adventure novelists." He snapped his fingers. "Aha! I've got it!"

A few moments later, I found myself hurtling through the air, desperately clinging to a rope hanging from the _Fancy_'s mast. A good hard shove from Patch and Ace had given me the momentum; all I had to do was hold on. That part I managed, but when I swung out over the _Swallow_'s deck and let go, the sudden sensation of free-fall made me squeal in fright, which became a yelp of pain when I hit the deck.

"Amelie!"

_No!_ My antics had caught the attention of most of the Dragonmaster's crew when I'd swung out above them, but it had been my pained voice that Mel had instantly recognized and which had yanked his attention away from the duel. In the instant he turned his head, Dyne had sword-thrust coming in low, under his suddenly relaxed guard.

"Dyne, no!" I screamed, and somehow the Dragonmaster had the physical and mental reflexes to process the situation in his mind and pull the attack up short before it punched a hole in Mel's abdomen. I pulled myself to my feet and limped across the deck to thrust myself between them, my right knee and elbow throbbing with pain the whole time from when I'd crashed them into the deck.

"Stop this. Stop it _right now!_" I commanded, using my best Lady-of-the-Manor voice. Neither man looked to be particularly overawed by my pretensions of authority; in fact, they were actually grinning at one another in that bemused way men get when they feel a woman is being an Inscrutable Female. Since they weren't trying to chop each other to bits anymore, I didn't bother complaining. "There's something important to settle, here, and I don't mean your little fight. No one's killing anyone until I get some answers."


	17. Chapter XVI

I wasn't the daughter of a Meribian merchant prince for nothing. It was self-evident that I had no chance of stopping Mel and Dyne from going on with their duel if they really wanted to, but this wasn't some epic struggle between good and evil or a deeply personal act of vengeance. If I could keep them off-balance with a bit of humor combined with serious questions I stood a good chance of getting answers. The strategy had been effective enough on the island, so why not here?

Dyne's eyes swept me up and down assessingly. There was nothing sexual about it, just taking my measure.

"Your captain and I have an agreement on how to settle our differences fairly. What makes you think that you can intervene now?"

"Because it _isn't_ fair."

"Amelie," Mel said, putting a hand on my shoulder from behind, "he ain't using his Dragon Magic or even wearing the armor, but is fighting me man-to-man. Ya can't ask fer fairer than that."

"_Men!_" I snorted in a voice women have used for centuries. "I'm not saying that the _fight_ isn't fair. I'm pointing out that a fair fight isn't necessarily a fair solution to the issues at hand."

They both looked at me curiously, and the amused curl of Dyne's lip was fading. Good. He was starting to take me seriously.

"That's an interesting statement, Miss de Alkirk. Go ahead and explain yourself."

"I'm trying to learn for myself why you're here, Dragonmaster. Why do I justify a rescue mission from Lunar's greatest champion? I'm not personally special, and while yes, I was kidnapped by pirates, you yourself have been willing to trust Mel's sworn word. You must have known, then, that when the ransom was paid I would be released unharmed. There must be dozens of people across Lunar in far more danger than I was, so you should have been rescuing them instead if general heroism was your motive. Yes, my family is rich and powerful, but I still have faith that to you and the Goddess at least _that_ wouldn't matter. So why did you sail off with a magician from Vane and several priests and a small army of guardsmen? I'm just not that important." I turned my head and looked up at Mel with a smile. "At least, not to most people."

To look at Mel, though, my head had to turn so that the _Fancy_ and its crew were in my line of sight, and another piece fell into place..

"You're not even interested in the pirates, are you, Dragonmaster? If this was about stopping particularly vicious buccaneers--which they aren't--you'd never have agreed to let the crew go free as a term of the duel. Besides which, the Goddess has never interfered in petty crime; if she had there wouldn't even _be_ a town of Reza!"

Dyne nodded.

"You're right on all counts, Miss de Alkirk."

"Har, hold it a minute there!" Mel burst out. "Do ya mean we've been doing our level best to kill each other fer the better part o' two hours fer the fun o' it?"

"No, we've been doing our level best to kill one another for the better part of two hours because rescuing Miss de Alkirk is an important step on a greater mission given to me by the Goddess."

"My biology tutor once told me that when two packs of Albino Baboons start competing for territory, the lead males will fight to the death and the winner will become the alpha for the combined pack," I observed. Mel and Dyne looked sheepishly at one another.

"Do you think she means us?" Dyne asked conversationally.

"I'm thinking it'd be better not ta think too much about that."

"Probably not," Dyne said. He sheathed his sword, then unclipped it from his belt and dropped it along with his nearly-ruined shield. Incandescent white fire swirled around him, and he was once again bearing the arms and armor of the Dragonmaster right down to the silly fur-trimmed helmet. "I presume we can consider the duel over? By the time your boss here gets done washing our heads, mine will probably start in."

"Harr, I'm thinking ya probably can skip that part."

"No use," he sighed. "That 'all-seeing, all-knowing' bit doesn't really give a man much room for hiding his stupidity."

"At least you can hope for 'all-merciful,'" I noted.

"After suitable atonement and repentance."

"No wonder ya never married," Mel chuckled.

Dyne glanced from Mel to me and grinned. All right, I supposed I could allow the man one.

"Seriously, though, Dragonmaster, what is it the Goddess wants of you?"

"She wasn't specific, only that your kidnapping would be part of a chain of events leading to the rising of a great darkness and that I should follow to be on hand to prevent it."

I glanced at Mel; our eyes met and we both burst out laughing.

"Did I miss something?"

"Only that ya be about a week late, matey!" Mel guffawed.

My laughter, I had to admit, had a touch of hysteria to it. We had, after all, been chased down by the Dragonmaster, nearly involved in a mass battle, and Mel had been caught up in an epic duel, all as a silly postscript to what we'd gone through on the island.

Dyne sighed.

"I think that we'd better have the whole story before anything else happens."

~X X X~

"Grimzol, you say?"

The captain's cabin of the _Swallow_ was even more handsomely outfitted than the _Black Fortune_'s. Mel and I, together with Morgan, Ace, and Jack, had plenty of room at the table together with Dyne, Eryx, two of the priests, an armored guardsman who'd been called Captain (presumably his military rank rather than his position on the ship) and a fellow dressed as a sailor who likely _was_ the ship's captain when he hadn't been demoted on account of the Dragonmaster's presence. Refreshments had been served, ranging from a first-class Meribian red wine to an equally excellent (as such things went) dark rum for the sea-dog types and the first cup of tea I'd had since leaving Meribia.

"That be what Van Dierken's ghost called it," Mel agreed. "Grimzol, the Plague-Bringer...and something else, besides."

"Black Wind of the Prairie," Ace supplied. He was grinning broadly--and pretty much had been the whole time. Apparently there'd been a betting pool on the outcome of the duel and he'd had fifty silver on "Amelie stops it before anyone gets killed."

The elder cleric, a green-haired priestess with a sharp-featured, almost cruel face but kind and gentle eyes, snapped her fingers loudly.

"I've heard that name. Or, rather I've seen it in the archives. Grimzol was a kind of god-king who ruled the Prairie centuries, maybe even millennia ago."

"Is that 'maybe' because you don't remember or because the records are uncertain?" asked Eryx.

The second priest, a rotund little man with a mop of curly black hair, chuckled and said, "If you knew Jenna at all, Eryx, you'd know that she never forgets anything."

"It was from before the last expansion of the Vile Tribe from the Frontier," Jenna explained, apparently not offended. "The archives aren't very precise about Lunar's history from that period."

"The Library of Vane has the same problem," Eryx observed, "although of course Vane didn't come into being until shortly after that."

"Perhaps cross-checking between the Shrine archives, the Magic Library, and Damon the Keeper of Knowledge could fill in some of those gaps?" the male priest suggested.

"We're wandering a bit," Dyne said. "You can solve the library problems later. Jenna, could you finish telling us about Grimzol?"

"There isn't much to tell. He, or it, was a fiendish tyrant that ruled for a couple of centuries, demanding tribute and blood sacrifice from its followers. When it didn't get what it wanted--or when it just was in the mood--it would sweep the Prairie with plague winds. The story goes that the people of Pao at last prayed to Althena for help and the Goddess sent the Dragonmasters--"

"Plural?" Dyne asked.

"It was the twins, Alicia and Laticia."

"Now that should give us a date, or at last narrow it down to a couple of decades."

"Hush, Cheb. Anyway, the Dragonmasters destroyed Grimzol's undead slaves and defeated the demon in battle, and Althena sealed it away in an idol so that it could no longer spread sickness and death."

"Why not just kill the thing?" Jack asked.

"Any kind of clash between powerful magical forces can be cataclysmic," Eryx observed. "More than likely, the energies required would have been far too destructive. Instead, it was weakened in battle, made vulnerable by its defeat, and sealed away so it could no longer harm anyone. Consider also that demonic creatures of that sort generally require some external source of power to sustain themselves in this world, usually the sacrificed lives of others."

"I see," I exclaimed. "So, after Althena sealed Grimzol away, it grew weaker and weaker over the centuries until it could be destroyed by the level of power Mel had."

"That sums it up quite nicely," Eryx concluded.

"So, the _Cape Matapan_ expedition found the Grimzol idol during its looting of the Prairie," Dyne pulled it all together. "No one knew that specifically because the details had been lost over the centuries. Even written history tends to do that, and the Prairie Tribe primarily hands down its traditions and lore in story and song."

"Morgan, you mentioned that there was a pagan idol in the treasure when you told the story in Pegleg Pete's."

"The log was found, if you'll remember, Amelie. The merchants probably kept an exact tally of the loot for accounting purposes. Grimzol stuck in the story because an idol was a colorful detail, much more interesting treasure than just another sack of silver."

"All things considered, I'll take the silver," Ace decided. No one seemed inclined to disagree.

"So, when the _Balthasar_ sank, Van Dierken was desperate enough, and evil enough, to give the demon his soul--and the lives of his first mate and anyone else they hadn't killed yet--in exchange for power and continued existence. However, they were still stuck on an island no one had any reason to visit, so they reached out to Teach to lure in victims."

"Only," Dyne finished up, "the victims turned out to have the will and courage to face down the demon and the dead alike, and the strength and wits to win the battle."

There were any number of embarrassed blushes and schoolchild grins--sometimes both--on our side of the table. Compliments on one's heroic qualities from the Dragonmaster himself weren't something pirates (or heiresses) received every day.

"So the question then becomes," he continued, "where do we go from here? My mission has been accomplished, and Miss de Alkirk isn't being held prisoner by anyone at this point, and as has been pointed out to me any number of times, the Dragonmaster isn't supposed to be stamping out petty crime and hunting pirates, particularly as a fair number of you will likely be retiring on your shares of the _Cape Matapan_ treasure."

He stroked his chin thoughtfully, a gesture that worked better if one had a beard.

I'm partial to you letting go with a smile and a friendly wave," Ace observed, "but I'm guessing that's too easy."

"Particularly with House de Alkirk out for blood," Morgan noted.

"And there is a difference," the guard captain spoke up for the first time, "between it not being our job to hunt pirates and letting one go once he's in custody."

"There's a fine reward for destroying an evil demon," Cheb observed dryly. "Or are you feeling snarky because you were looking forward to fighting the undead hordes of evil, Captain?"

He shrugged, the gesture making his mail coat rattle.

"Just thought I'd toss law and order out there on the table, us being the good guys and all."

"I'd say that the first thing would be to return to that island and verify that Grimzol is indeed destroyed," Eryx pointed out. "No offense intended, but none of you is an expert in dealing with magical forces."

"None taken," said Mel. "I can't say I'd want to be."

"I have a suggestion for dealing with my family," I put in.

"Oh?"

"Yes." I took a deep breath, not sure if I was more nervous because of what I intended to say or because I was about to say it in front of a crowd. "My family is angry about a _kidnapping_: stealing what is theirs, the loss of face--maybe even some personal concern for me. If, on the other hand, what happened was an _elopement_...well, that would be scandalous, but not in a send-out-the-navy kind of way. Especially as it removes the financial risk."

"But it weren't no elopement," Mel said.

Ace groaned.

"We're _pirates_, Captain. We _lie_ about it."

"Or do you just not want to marry me, Mel?" I tried to keep my voice light, but it cracked on the last word, curse it.

"Marry? Yer asking me ta marry ya?"

"Odd. Usually beastmen have better hearing than humans," Cheb observed to Ace.

"Should gone into the priesthood, Ace," Jack said. "There's the place for smart-mouths."

"Ran out of insulting things to call the nobility, so you've moved on to the servants of the Goddess, have you?"

Their chatter, though, was scarcely background noise to me. Room full of people or not, for all I was paying attention to the rest of them Mel and I might have been alone on an iceberg.

"Yes, Mel," I said, "I'm asking if you will marry me. I know that we're a mismatched pair if there ever was one, but I also know that I'll be happier working with you daily to fit our lives together than I could ever be in any life that didn't have your love in it. I only hope that you feel the same."

His eyes were wide with bewilderment and joy all in one, as if Althena had just walked up and dropped his heart's desire in his lap. Maybe she had.

"I don't understand," he said slowly, "why a fine lady such as yerself as would want ta be shackled ta an old sea-dog like me. But if that be what ya want, then I'll not be such a fool as ta say no, fer I love ya too, Amelie de Alkirk."

There were tears in his eyes as he said it, and the biggest smile on his face I'd ever seen. It struck me than even when Mel had suffered the most brutal injuries, he'd never shed a tear, and I never saw him weep again until the day you were born.

Applause burst out then, reminding me that we were not, in fact, alone, and this time I joined Mel in the blushing--and in the gigantic smile.

"'Mel de Alkirk'...I like the sound of that," Morgan decided.

"What d'ya mean?" Mel asked, confused.

"You're marrying into the nobility, Captain. Since you are, shall I say, not exactly of noble birth, that means you'll be joining Amelie's family."

Dyne burst out laughing.

"Ho ho ho! I'd forgotten about that. I can't wait to see her uncle's face!"

I could have taken offense, but then, I knew my uncle.

"I think you're going to have to give up piracy, Captain," Ace noted. "Well..unauthorized piracy, at least. You'll probably steal more as a merchant lord."

"Or, you could find honest work," Dyne suggested, "since you're acquiring a wife and a fortune. Become a pillar of the community. Impress the in-laws--or at least annoy them."

Mel laughed.

"What, me a merchant?"

"Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of getting into the Questing Hero business. As you've already seen, the work is hard and the pay scale slides a bit--dung one day, Dragon dung the next--but it has its good points. Of course, I'm only saying that so you'll come along and let somebody besides me handle some of the hack-and-slash routines. I swear that most magicians' knowledge of weapons begins and ends with 'don't hold the pointy end.'"

"So now that ya toss around magic o' yer own ya find yerself slipping, har?" Mel quipped. I will never understand how two men can pound each other flat and immediately start acting like they're been best friends for years.

"Exactly. It spoils a man, wearing this silly hat into battle. So are you in?"

"O' course," he said, then reached out and took my hand in his, "but yer gonna have ta wait a few months before ya get ta dragging me off anywhere. I've gotta make sure the most important things get started out right."

I couldn't have agreed more.


	18. Chapter XVII

With matters of life, death, and matrimony settled, the two ships returned to the island, where the Dragonmaster and his staff made certain that Grimzol was in fact gone for good. They also took into custody those artifacts of religious and cultural significance which needed to be returned to the Prairie Tribe. Mel pointed out that since they had a perfectly good steamship there with nearly empty cargo holds, they should put it to use in recovering the rest of Van Dierken's loot that wouldn't fit on the _Fancy_. Cheb then pointed out that the _Swallow_ technically belonged to Althena's Guard, and that some sort of transport fee might be reasonable. The negotiations between the three of them involved several hours and a considerable quantity of beer. Since any drinking not done in Pegleg Pete's was a step in the right direction so far as I was concerned, I won a number of points as a kind and understanding fiancee the next day--particularly after Jenna got through with Cheb!

(Incidentally, Cleansing Litany holy magic makes for an excellent hangover cure.)

We then returned to Blue Dragon Key, where we bailed the crew of the _Black Fortune_ out of jail. Apparently, they'd surrendered to Dyne, which was how the Dragonmaster had known where to start looking for us. The second purchase made from the treasure was a new set of masts; apparently Dyne had burned them to the deck with Red Dragon magic in order to persuade them to surrender. Mel didn't blame them, though there was a lot of teasing from those on the _Fancy_ about how _we'd_ stood up to Dyne and fought.

Actual work on the ship did not commence for several days, however, because the recovery of the _Cape Matapan_ treasure became the occasion for, as Patch put it, "the biggest damn party this isle o' freebooters, buccaneers, an' cutthroats ever saw!" The story of the adventure was told and retold over and over again and grew each time with the telling. The skeleton crew became a full-fledged army of the undead, Grimzol went from being an idol to a hundred-foot-tall, fire-spewing colossus, and Mel's duel with Dyne, long enough as it was, had gained hours, then days with each retelling I'd heard until the story settled in at the nice round total of one week of ceaseless battle. My part in breaking up the fight was generally omitted, which was all for the best so far as I was concerned.

Eventually, the party died down, sobriety set in, bribes (or, "taxes on imported goods") were paid, and the pirates got around to the serious business of splitting the treasure. Since Edgars, the quartermaster, had been one of those killed on the beach, Morgan ended up getting elected to the position on account of his education having covered mathematics. Since I was no longer a hostage, I commandeered the services of the local de Alkirk agent and his staff in cataloguing and appraising the loot. He was amazingly cooperative once Jack and Patch had a talk with him about what might be done to win their forgiveness for the ill-fated rescue attempt at Pegleg Pete's. I didn't ask for details.

The process of valuing and dividing the treasure took up the rest of the first week back, so I put the time to good use. Blue Dragon Key was not what one might call the center of civilized life, but with careful searching there were hidden treasures to be found, such as Madame Velessa, a beastwoman seamstress. When told why I was there, she went to work with an enthusiasm I could scarcely believe.

When the treasure was shared out a good half of the pirates retired outright from life at sea. They had made enough money to settle down to a comfortable existence, to buy a house or a plot of land, perhaps a shop, and live without the uncertainty and poverty that had driven them to sea in the first place. Stede returned to command of the _Fancy_, and with him went those pirates who wished to remain pirates, whether because they were greedy for more, just thieves at heart, or could not give up the freedom of life beholden to no master. The _Fancy_ sailed almost as soon as the treasure was divided; the presence of the Dragonmaster and other assorted representatives of order and justice made committed pirates nervous.

Those remaining pirates, those who chose neither all nor nothing, remained with the _Black Fortune_. She and her crew were in essence Mel's dowry to House de Alkirk, for they'd signed her up as a privateer. I issued the letter of marque myself, and since I probably didn't have the technical right to do so I once again dragooned in our local agent to countersign it. I pointed out that Father would hardly disagree with making sure one of the most notorious pirates on the Meribian Sea would no longer be attacking our shipping _and_ giving us a cut of the take besides. To this eminently logical reasoning we added Mel's scowl, Dyne's glare, and a few rumblings from Jenna about the state of his soul. Between the carrot and the stick I don't think I've ever seen anyone reach for the ink-pot faster.

With Mel officially retiring from piracy, the _Fortune_'s next order of business was to elect a captain, in which the crew surprised me again by picking Ace.

"Why not?" Mel said when I asked him about it. "He's a good fighter, a good seafaring man, and ya have to have a cool head in a crisis ta makes so many jokes about all that's going wrong."

I couldn't argue with that, and I was happy for him, since it meant he'd now have no regrets for turning down Grimzol's offer, but I was still curious.

"I'd have expected them to pick Jack, though." In truth, I was amazed Jack hadn't gone with the _Fancy_, but he'd explained that he was staying to "do his bit for the only two (counting Mel) decent nobles in Meribia." That made me feel unaccountably proud.

"Jack? Maybe in another few years he'll make a good captain. Before that, he needs ta get his head straight. He's jest learning ta use his anger, not be used by it, and the crew sees that. Besides, who'd ever take seriously a pirate named Captain Hook?"

Then, at last, the preliminary matters had been gotten out of the way and the true occasion to celebrate was upon us, namely Mel and my wedding. We held it on the deck of the _Fortune_, it being Mel's last act as captain. I was a bit said that I had only Anne and Jenna to stand up with me, but that slight discontent evaporated at once when the music began to play and Dyne escorted me from the captain's cabin to begin the processional down the length of the deck to the mast. Morgan, Ace, Jack, and Patch looked anywhere from dashing to uncomfortable in their borrowed Guard uniforms (the closest we could get to matching formal wear on short notice), and as for Mel...

I was sure Morgan had taken him in hand for the wardrobe; his immaculate white shirt, breeches, and cravat, the polished black boots, and the midnight-blue coat edged with gold made him look every inch the gentleman outside that I knew him to be in his heart. The expression on his face when he saw me was all I could have hoped for; he looked like someone had hit him on the back of his head, he was so starstruck in amazement.

Madame Velessa's creation was a magnificent combination of formal elegance and barbaric magnificence, a confection in purest white silk and lace. There was no train, but long swathes descended from my wrists as commonly shown in depictions of Althena, and another pair swept back from my lace-collared throat, framing bare shoulders in sweeping arcs that rose, billowing with the sea breeze before descending to my waist in back. The flowers in my bouquet were pale blue to match my eyes. As I came to stand beside Mel, the overwhelmed bewilderment slowly faded, to be replaced by an almost radiant awe.

"Amelie, ya'd put Althena herself to shame," he breathed.

"Every woman is a goddess on her wedding day," I said with sudden shyness, but also pride that I'd affected him so deeply. It was obvious that Mel felt awed that an aristocrat, an elegant lady had "deigned" to fall in love with him, but that emotion cut both ways. Mel was decent and kind at the same time as he was brave and strong; despite a life of outlawry he had retained a sense of honor, and above all he didn't just _believe_ in decency but had the willpower to _act_ on it. He was a genuine, honest-to-Althena hero, and he had picked me, who had never done anything worthwhile in her life.

I didn't believe that it was possible to love anyone any more than I loved Mel at the moment when we spoke our vows, but I was wrong, for love grew day by day, year by year.

And _that_, my dearest Jessica, is how I came to meet and marry your father. I hope that the telling has helped you understand him a bit better, and why he sees you in the light that he does. And when Althena blesses you with a love in time, you might remind him that there was at least one lady who has never regretted that she chose to marry her pirate.

(It probably won't win him over, but it should distract him long enough to give your boyfriend a head start.)

Forever with love,

Your mother,

Amelie de Alkirk


End file.
